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A  MEMORIAL 


SAMUEL  F.  B.  MORSE, 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Letter  of  Mayor  Gaston 3 

Letter  of  A.  S.  Solomons 3 

Eesolution 4 

Order  of  City  Council,  Boston 5 

Meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall 7 

Eesolution  of  the  National  Telegraph  Association 8 

Resolutions 8 

Letter  of  Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop 9 

Despatch  from  the  National  Morse  Memorial  Meeting,  Washington  ....  10 

Remarks  of  Prof.  E.  N.  Horsford 11 

Remarks  of  Hon.  R.  H.  Dana,  Jr 47 

Remarks  of  Mr.  E.  P.  Whipple 51 

Remarks  of  Hon.  George  S.  Hillard 53 

Appendices 57 

Appendix  A 59 

Appendix  B 65 

Appendix  C 87 


E  H  K  A  T  A. 


Page  14.  — Twelfth  line  from  the  bottom,  for  "  the  first,"  read  "he  first.' 
"     18.  —  Twentieth  line  from  top,  for  "  this  period,"  read  "  this  point.'' 
"    27.  —  Third  line  from  bottom,  strike  out  "  at  this  distance." 
"    49.  —  Sixteenth  line  from  top,  for  "  Aspinwell,"  read  "  AspinwalL" 


CITY    OF    BOSTON. 


Executive  Department, 
City  Hall,  Boston,  April  10th,  1872. 
To  the  City  Council  :  — 

I  have  received  a  letter  from  A.  S.  Solomons,  Esq., 
enclosing  a  copy  of  a  resolution  passed  by  the  National 
Telegraph  Memorial  Monument  Association,  in  honor  of  the 
memory  of  the  late  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  which  letter  and 
resolution  I  transmit  herewith,  and  I  respectfully  invite  your 
attention  to  the  same. 

WILLIAM   GASTON,  Mayor. 


National  Telegraph  Memorial  Monument  Association, 
Washington,  D.  C,  April  5,  1872. 

To  the  Honorable  Mayor  of  the  City  of  Boston  :  — 
Sir,  —  I  have  the  honor  to  transmit  to  you  herewith  a 
resolution  adopted  by  this  Association,  inviting  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  friends  and  admirers  of  the  late  Professor  Samuel 
F.  B.  Morse  throughout  the  country,  in  holding  meetings,  on 
Tuesday  evening,  the  16th  instant,  simultaneously  with  a 
great  National  Memorial  Meeting  to  be  held  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  at  the  National  Capital. 

On  behalf  of  this  Association,  I  respectfully  and  earnestly 
request  you  to  take  appropriate  measures,  at  the  earliest 
moment  possible,  for  holding  such  a  meeting  in  your  city  at 


the  time  named.  The  telegraph  wires  will  be  freely  open  on 
the  occasion  for  an  exchange  of  sentiments  between  the 
several  meetings  and  the  one  held  here. 

The  favor  of  an  early  reply  is  requested. 
Very  respectfully,  yours, 

A.    S.    SOLOMONS, 
Chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Arrangements. 


RESOLUTION. 

WJiereas,  the  United  States  House  of  Representatives  has  placed 
its  hall  at  the  disposal  of  the  National  Telegraph  Memorial  Monu- 
ment Association,  for  the  purpose  of  holding  a  memorial  meeting 
in  honor  of  the  late  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  on  Tuesday,  April  16th, 
and  prominent  members  of  both  houses  of  Congress  and  other  dis- 
tinguished speakers  have  consented  to  address  the  meeting ; 

And,  whereas,  the  telegraph  has  been  freely  placed  at  the  dis- 
posal of  this  Association  for  that  evening,  to  secure  an  exchange  of 
sentiments  with  the  meetings  held  in  all  portions  of  the  country  : 

Be  it  resolved,  That  the  municipal  authorities  of  the  cities  of 
the  United  States  are  hereby  invited  to  call  meetings  of  similar 
character  in  their  several  localities  on  the  same  evening,  in  order 
that  the  meetings  may  be  in  telegraphic  communication,  and  thus 
a  simultaneous  expression  be  given  to  the  national  grief  on  the 
occasion  of  this  irreparable  loss. 

Attest :  H.    AMIDON,  Secretary. 


CITY    OF    BOSTON. 


In  Common  Council,  April  11,  1872. 

Ordered,  That  his  Honor  the  Mayor  be  requested  to  call  a 
meeting  of  the  citizens  of  Boston  in  Faneuil  Hall,  on  Tues- 
day evening  next,  the  16th  inst.,  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
expression  to  the  feelings  of  this  community  on  the  great  loss 
sustained  by  the  nation  in  the  death  of  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse. 

Sent  up  for  concurrence. 

M.   F.   DICKINSON,  Jr.,  President. 


In  Board  of  Aldermen,  April  13,  1872. 
Concurred, 

S.    LITTLE,  Chairman. 


MEETING  IN  FANUEIL  HALL. 


In  accordance  with  the  request  of  the  City  Council,  his 
Honor  the  Mayor  called  a  meeting  of  the  citizens  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  on  Tuesday  evening,  the  16th  of  April,  at  1\  o'clock, 
"  for  the  purpose  of  giving  expression  to  the  feelings  of  this 
community  on  the  great  loss  sustained  by  the  nation  in  the 
death  of  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse." 

The  meeting  was  organized  by  the  choice  of  the  following 
officers  :  — 

President.  —  His  Honor  William  Gaston. 

Vice-Presidents.  —  His  Excellency  William  B.  Washburn,  Wil- 
liam Claflin,  H.  H.  Coolidge,  Josiah  Quincy,  John  E.  Sanford, 
Alexander  H.  Rice,  F.  W.  Lincoln,  Otis  Norcross,  Marshall  P. 
Wilder,  Emory  Washburn,  John  H.  Clifford,  J.  M.  Wightman, 
N.  B.  Shurtleff,  Thomas  Russell,  George  B.  Upton,  E.  R.  Mudge, 
Harvey  Jewell,  Alpheus  Hardy,  George  S.  Hillard,  Professor 
Samuel  Eliot,  Professor  J.  D.  Runkle,  S.  H.  Walley,  B.  R.  Curtis, 
William  Gray,  George  C.  Richardson,  Albert  Fearing,  R.  A.  Chap- 
man, Horace  Gray,  Jr.,  John  Wells,  J.  D.  Colt,  Seth  Ames,  Mar- 
cus Morton,  George  B.  Loring,  Lorenzo  Sabine,  Homer  Bartlett, 
Thomas  Aspinwall,  William  Perkins,  J.  M.  Forbes,  Gardner 
Brewer,  Nathan  Carruth,  Amos  A.  Lawrence,  James  L.  Little, 
Francis  Bacon,  James  M.  Beebe,  Edward  Austin,  J.  Ingersoll 
Bowdifcch,  Henry  L.  Pierce,  Benjamin  E.  Bates,  Benjamin  T. 
Reed,  James  T.  Fields,  Samuel  Little,  M.  F.  Dickinson,  Jr.,  E.  S. 
Tobey,  William  B.  Spooner,  Charles  G.  Greene,  Heniy  W.  Paine, 
William  Whiting,  George  Lewis,  H.  O.  Houghton,  William  H. 
Kent,   Edward   Atkinson,    Charles  W.  Slack,    S.   N.    Stockwell, 


8 


Delano  A.  Goddard,  Roland  Worthington,  George  L.  Ward, 
Joseph  S.  Ropes,  William  Parsons,  Avery  Plumer,  J.  C.  Con- 
verse, Nathaniel  H.  Emmons,  .F.  B.  Crowninshield,  N.  J.  Bradlee, 
Charles  E.  Jenkins,  Weston  Lewis,  W.  W.  Greenough,  T.  C. 
Amory,  Charles  H.  Allen,  Samuel  C.  Cobb,  George  B.  Nichols, 
Charles  W.  Wilder,  Alvan  Adams,  R.  B.  Forbes,  Edward  Whit- 
ney, Hamilton  A.  Hill,  Nathaniel  Adams,  Nathan  Crowell,  George 
B.  Faunce,  S.  D.  Warren,  Nathan  Matthews,  Cyrus  Wakefield, 
Nehemiah  Gibson,  G.  W.  Pope. 

Secretaries.  —  Charles  F.  Wood,  William  G.  Blanchard.  John  F. 
Kennard. 

The  Mayor  read  the  resolution  passed  by  the  National 
Telegraph  Association,  and  said,  — 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  — •  Several  distinguished  citizens  have 
consented  to  appear  here  to-night  and  address  ycu.  They  are 
gentlemen  known  here  and  everywhere  in  the  country,  and  there 
will,  therefore,  be  no  occasion  to  announce  them  otherwise  than  by 
their  names.  I  will  first  introduce  to  you  the  Honorable  Josiah 
Quincy. 

Mr.  Quincy  then  read  the  following  resolutions  :  — 

Besolved,  That  the  City  of  Boston,  in  common  with  the  rest  of 
the  country,  and  the  whole  civilized  world,  feel  sensibly  the  loss 
which  science  has  sustained  in  the  death  of  Professor  Morse, 
whose  great  invention  has  been  of  incalculable  value  to  all  the 
interests  of  life,  and  has  conferred  lasting  honor  upon  his  country. 

Mesolved,  That  it  is  peculiarly  incumbent  upon  us  to  express 
our  sense  of  the  loss  which  the  world  has  sustained  in  the  death 
of  the  eminent  benefactor  of  the  human  race,  from  the  fact  that 
he  was  born  among  us,  and  that  his  early  training  was  drawn 
from  the  institutions  of  New  England. 

Charles  F.  Wood,  Esq.,  the  Secretary,  read  the  following 
communication :  — 


Brookline,  16th  April,  1872. 

Dear  Mr.  Mayor,  —  I  am  sincerely  sorry  that  a  previous 
engagement  for  this  evening  will  prevent  my  attendance  at 
the  meeting  to  which  you  have  so  kindly  invited  me.  It  would 
have  given  me  peculiar  satisfaction  to  take  part  in  the  proposed 
tribute  to  the  memory  of  Professor  Morse.  I  could  hardly, 
indeed,  have  said  much  of  "  the  loss  sustained  in  his  death." 
Spared,  as  he  was,  to  a  venerable  old  age,  with  his  great  work 
fully  accomplished  and  universally  recognized,  nothing  remained 
for  him  but  to  "put  on  that  immortality"  to  which  he  had  ever 
looked  forward  with  a  Christian's  hope  and  faith.  There  is  no 
loss  in  such  a  death.  But  the  gain  and  the  glory  which  the  nation 
has  derived  from  his  life  would  have  furnished  such  a  subject  of 
remark  as  has  rarely  been  presented  at  any  public  commemo- 
ration. 

When  Professor  Morse  first  appealed  to  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  for  aid  in  his  telegraphic  experiments,  thirty  years 
ago,  it  was  my  fortune,  not  only  to  be  a  representative  in  Con- 
gress from  the  city  of  Boston,  but  to  be  a  member  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  Commerce,  to  which  his  appeal  was  referred,  and  by 
which  the  first  appropriation  in  his  behalf  was  reported.  I  rejoice 
to  remember  that  I  supported  that  appropriation  both  in  com- 
mittee and  in  the  House,  though  not  a  few  around  me  were  either 
leaving  their  seats  to  avoid  the  responsibility  of  the  measure,  or 
remaining  only  to  deride  and  oppose  it.  Boston  may  thus  claim 
to-night  to  have  contributed  at  least  one  vote  to  the  original  sue 
cess  of  the  great  enterprise. 

Two  years  afterwards,  I  stood  in  the  throng  on  the  steps  of  the 
Capitol  while  the  first  formal  messages  were  passing  along  the 
magic  chords  between  Washington  and  Baltimore  ;  and  when  the 
announcement  of  Mr.  Polk's  nomination  for  the  presidency,  a  few 
seconds  only  after  it  had  been  decided  upon  by  a  convention  forty 
or  fifty  miles  off,  with  the  tender  of  the  vice-presidency  to  Mr. 
Silas  Wright,  refused  in  our  presence  as  soon  as  made,  gave  us  all 
the  earliest  and  most  vivid  impression,  not  merely  that  a  new  kind 
of  wire-pulling  had  entered  into  politics,  but  that  a  mysterious 
and  marvellous  power  of  the  air  had  at  length  been  subdued  and 
trained  to  the  service  of  mankind. 


10 

Since  then,  I  need  not  say  the  triumphs  of  the  electric  tele- 
graph, over  land  and  over  sea,  have  made  themselves  felt  in  every 
sphere,  public  and  private,  throughout  the  world,  and  have  lit- 
erally come  home  to  every  man's  fortunes  and  fireside. 

We  of  Massachusetts  do  not  forget  that  Morse,  like  Franklin 
and  Count  Eumford,  pursued  his  researches  and  achieved  his 
successes  far  away  from  the  place  of  his  birth.  But  we  cannot 
forget,  also,  that  the  native  soil  of  them  all  is  contained  within 
the  same  narrow  boundaries  which  include  Lexington  and  Bunker 
Hill  and  Faneuil  Hall. 

"We  have  thus  something  of  a  peculiar  right  and  duty  to  unite 
in  doing  honor  to  the  name  and  fame  of  Professor  Morse,  and  to 
count  them  and  cherish  them  among  our  own  historical  treasures. 
Eegretting  once  more  my  inability  to  be  with  you, 
I  am,  dear  sir, 

With  great  respect  and  regard, 
Yours  faithfully, 

Robert  C.  Winthrop. 
His  Honor  William  Gaston,  Mayor  of  Boston. 

The  Secretary  also  read  the  following  despatch  :  — 

Washington,  D.  C,  April  16,  —7.45  P.  M. 

Chicago,  Milwaukee,  St.  Paul,  St.  Louis,  Pittsburg,  Cincinnati, 
Indianapolis,  Louisville,  San  Francisco,  Memphis,  Charleston,  Sa- 
vannah, Mobile,  New  Orleans,  Montreal,  Portland,  Augusta,  Lynn, 
Boston,  Concord,  New  Haven. 

The  National  Morse  Memorial  meeting  is  now  in  progress  in  the 
hall  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  Speaker  Blaine,  assisted  by 
the  Vice-President  of  the  United  States,  presiding,  and  the  gov- 
ernors of  the  several  States  acting  as  Vice-presidents,  and  is  now 
ready  to  receive  communications. 

A.   S.   Solomons,  Chairman. 

The  president  then  introduced  Professor  Eben  N.  Horsford, 
of  Cambridge,  who  spoke  as  follows  :  — 


11 

Mr.  Mayor,  —  You  have  assigned  to  me  the  duty  of  presenting 
a  sketch  of  Prof.  Morse's  connection  with  the  invention  of  the 
electric  telegraph. 

To  enable  us  fairly  to  appreciate  what  Prof.  Morse  did,  let  us 
briefly  glance  at  what  had  been  done  before  him.  He  discovered 
nothing  in  the  field  of  frictional  electricity.  Its  great  doctrines 
were  settled  more  than  a  century  ago.  He  did  not  discover  that  the 
electrical  force  could  be  transmitted  along  what  is  called  a  conduc- 
tor, for  it  was  found  out  by  Mr.  Grey  and  Mr.  Wheeler  (Trumbull, 
1853),  that  the  electric  shock  could  be  transmitted  through  several 
hundred  feet  of  wire  as  early  as  1729;  and  Dr.  Franklin  drew 
lightning  from  the  clouds;  nor  did  he  discover  that  the  earth 
might  be  made  a  part  of  the  electric  circuit,  for  that  is  due  to  Dr. 
Watson,  who  in  1747  transmitted  shocks  across  the  Thames  and 
the  New  River,  the  circuit  being  composed  of  one  wire  two  miles 
long  and  two  miles  of  earth. 

Dr.  Franklin  performed  a  similar  experiment  in  1748.  (Parton.) 
Franklin  says,  "Two  iron  rods  about  three  feet  long  were  planted 
just  within  the  margin  of  the  river  on  opposite  sides.  A  thick 
piece  of  wire,  with  a  small,  round  knob  at  its  end,  was  fixed  on  the 
top  of  one  of  the  rods,  bending  downwards  so  as  to  deliver  com- 
modiously  the  spark  upon  the  surface  of  the  spirit.  A  small  wire 
fastened  by  one  end  to  a  handle  of  the  spoon  containing  the  spirit 
was  carried  across  the  river  and  supported  in  the  air  by  the  rope 
commonly  used  to  hold  by  in  drawing  ferry-boats  over.  The  other 
end  of  this  wire  was  tied  round  the  coating  of  the  bottle,  which 
being  charged,  the  spark  was  delivered  from  the  hook  to  the  top  of 
the  rod  standing  in  the  water  on  that  side.  At  the  same  instant 
the  rod  on  the  other  side  delivered  a  spark  into  the  spoon  and  fired 
the  spirit ;  the  electric  fire  returning  to  the  coating  of  the  bottle, 
through  the  handle  of  the  spoon  and  the  supported  wire  connected 
with  them." 

Nor  was  he  the  first  to  employ  the  electrical  current  to  transmit 
intelligence  ;  signals  were  communicated  from  one  apartment  to 
another  by  means  of  the  electric  shock,  by  Lomond,  in  France,  in 
1757 ;  by  LeSage,  at  Geneva,  in  1774 ;  and  Reusser,  of  Gen- 
eva, in  1794,  employed  the  electric  spark  to  transmit  intelligence, 
using  an  arrangement  of  lines  and  spaces  with  strips  of  tin  foil  so 


12 


contrived  that  when  these  spaces  were  illuminated  by  the  sparks, 
the  form  of  the  letter  or  figure  was  exhibited.  The  illumination 
of  each  letter  or  figure  required  a  direct  and  return  wire,  aud  as 
his  plan  employed  thirty-seven  characters  there  were  required 
seventy-four  wires  between  each  two  stations.  Similar  telegraphs 
were  devised  by  Salva  and  Betancourt,  at  Madrid,  operating  many 
miles  in  length,  in  1797  and  1798.     (Humboldt.) 

All  these  employed  friction al  electricity,  as  did  Ronalds,  of 
England,  in  1816,  on  a  line  eight  miles  in  length,  operating  with 
pith  balls  on  the  faces  of  synchronous  clocks,  and  Harrison  G-. 
Dyer,  on  the  Long  Island  race-course,  near  New  York,  in  1827, 
on  a  line  of  two  miles,  using  the  current  to  discolor  prepared 
paper.  Up  to  this  time  the  elements  out  of  which  to  produce  a 
successful  telegraph  had  not  been  brought  to  light.  The  agent  at 
command  —  frictional  electricity  —  was  fitful,  influenced  by  the 
weather,  and,  at  a  distance,  liable  at  times  to  be  feeble. 

The  discovery  of  the  voltaic  pile,  in  1800,  opened  up  a  new 
era  for  invention  in  telegraphy.  It  gave  the  advantage  of  the 
constant  currrent  of  a  battery  over  the  intermitted  shocks  of  the 
electrical  apparatus.  Soemmering,  in  1809-11,  employed  the 
electric  current  developed  by  the  voltaic  pile  to  produce  chemical 
decompositions  with  the  evolution  of  visible  gas ;  he  employed 
thirty-five  wires,  each  wire  having  the  same  letter  or  figure  at  either 
end.  It  would  of  course  be  possible  to  transmit  words  by  pro- 
ducing gas  bubbles  at  the  ends  of  the  wires,  bearing  in  their  order 
of  succession  the  letters  of  which  the  words  were  composed. 

This  was  not  a  telegraph  —  a  'writing  at  a  distance.  It  was  a 
signal  apparatus ;  a  voltaic  semaphore.  But  it  was  cumbrous, 
time-consuming,  and  interesting  chiefly  as  illustrating  how  early 
the  discovery  of  the  projectile  force  of  the  voltaic  battery  was 
recognized  and  applied  to  the  production  of  visible  chemical 
effects  at  a  distance. 

Schweigger  proposed  to  reduce  the  great  number  of  wires  in 
Soemmering's  apparatus  to  only  two,  and  instead  of  a  tube  for  the 
evolution  of  gas  for  each  letter,  a  single  tube,  and  the  letter  to  be 
indicated  by  the  number  of  seconds  through  which  the  evolution 
of  hydrogen  should  continue.  This  .apparatus  so  simplified  was 
to  be  used  in  connection  with  a  signal  book. 


13 


There  was  needed  further  discovery.  The  first  step  in  the  new- 
branch  of  science  which  was  to  fulfil  this  want  was  taken  by  the 
Scandinavian,  GErsted,  of  Copenhagen,  who,  in  1819,  found  that 
when  the  electric  current  passes  in  a  direction  north  or  south  through 
a  wire,  it  causes  a  free,  magnetic  needle  immediately  above  or 
below  it,  to  assume  or  tend  to  assume  a  position  at  right  angles 
to  the  direction  of  the  current,  and  that  by  reversing  the  direction 
of  the  current  the  movement  of  the  needle  may  be  alike  reversed. 
In  the  next  year  Schweigger  of  Halle,  and  Poggendorff  of  Berlin, 
simultaneously  discovered  that  the  deflection  of  the  needle  may 
be  increased  by  coiling  an  insulated  wire  in  a  series  of  ovals  or 
flat  rings,  compactly  disposed,  in  a  loop,  and  conducting  the  cur- 
rent around  the  needle,  from  end  to  end  ;  and  produced  the  "gal- 
vanic multiplier,"  by  which  the  deflection  of  the  needle  was  much 
greater  and  more  prompt.  This  invention  was  the  basis  of  the 
galvanometer  first  used  by  Professor  Henry. 

Ampere  took  advantage  of  the  discovery  of  Schweigger  to  pro- 
pose a  plan  for  a  telegraph  in  which  there  was  a  needle  for  each 
letter.  These  discoveries  made  possible  the  electro-magnetic  sig- 
nal or  semaphoric  telegraph.  The  early  telegraphs,  of  Schilling 
of  St.  Petersburg,  of  Gauss  and  Weber  of  G-6ttingen,  and  of  Cooke 
and  Wheatstone  of  England,  were  based  on  these  discoveries.  The 
electric  current  could  now  be  made  to  produce  reciprocal  motion, 
but  the  force  was  too  feeble  to  be  used  in  practical  recording, 
and  the  necessary  devices  for  the  production  of  intelligible  signals 
were  undesirably  complex. 

Still  further  discovery  was  required  'for  a  registering  telegraph, 
and  the  first  step  in  this  needed  direction  was  made  by  Arago, 
who  in  1820  magnetized  a  straight  iron  bar  or  needle  by  placing  it 
in  a  long  spiral  of  wire  and  transmitting  the  galvanic  current  through 
the  coil.*     The  second  step  was  taken  by  Schweigger  in  the  pro- 

*  De  la  Eive  sent  a  current  through  a  close  circuit  of  insulated  copper 
wire,  showing  that  the  ring  produced  by  the  current  acquired  singular  mag- 
netic properties.  Barlow,  in  describing  the  apparatus  in  1824,  says;  "A  fine 
copper  wire  covered  with  silk  thread  is  coiled  five  or  six  times  and  tied  togeth- 
er so  as  to  form  a  ring  about  an  inch  in  diameter,  and  the  ends  of  the  wire  are 
connected,  by  solder,  one  with  the  zinc  and  the  other  with  the  copper  slip 
above  the  cork.  When  the  apparatus  is  placed  in  water,  slightly  acidulated 
with  sulphuric  or  nitric  acid,  the  ring  becomes  highly  magnetic,  etc." 


14 


duction  of  the  flat  spiral.  In  1824,  Barlow  gives  a  diagram  of  the 
volute  in  one  plane  invented  by  Schweigger,  and  says,  p.  266, 
"The  best  form  for  the  spiral,  however,  is  that  in  which  the  wire 
lies  all  in  one  plane  (as  in  Fig.  24)."  (This  figure  exhibits  a  coil 
like  the  hair-spring  of  a  watch.)  "This  being  connected  by  its 
two  extremities  with  the  poles  of  the  battery  will  take  up  an  aston- 
ishing quantity  of  filings  which  by  their  reciprocal  attraction  to- 
ward each  other  exhibit  the  most  pleasing  appearance." 

The  next  step  was  taken  by  Mr.  William  Sturgeon  of  London, 
in  1825.  He  found  that  by  coiling  copper  wire  loosely  around  a 
piece  of  insulated  soft  iron,  bent  into  the  form  of  a  horseshoe,  the 
successive  coils  out  of  contact  with  each  other,  he  could  convert 
the  non-magnetic  soft  iron  into  an  electro-magnet.  When  the  cur- 
rent was  interrupted,  the  soft  iron  ceased  to  be  magnetic  ;  when  the 
current  was  restored,  the  iron  became  again  magnetic.  This  gave 
the  possibility  of  producing  reciprocal  motion.*  The  force  thus 
imparted  to  the  iron,  the  capacity  to  attract  other  iron  and  to  re- 
lease it  when  the  current  was  interrupted,  though  actual,  was  not 
suited  in  two  particulars  to  be  used  in  telegraphy.  It  employed  a 
quantity  battery,  and  the  length  of  wire  connecting  the  battery 
with  the  magnet  was  inconsiderable. 

At  this  stage  of  the  development  of  electro-magnetism  came  in  the 
series  of  brilliant  experimental  researches  made  by  Professor  Joseph 
Henry,  now  Secretary  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  then  residing 
in  Albany.  They  were  made  from  1828  to  1831.  Eeflecting  on  the 
increased  magnetic  effects  observed  in  the  compact  circles  of  insu- 
lated wire  of  Schweigger  and  De  La  Rive,  the  first  employed  the  insu- 
lated wire  of  many  coils  to  make  an  electro-magnet. .  By  a  covering  of 
silk  or  cotton,  successive  coils  of  the  wire  were  kept  distinct  and 
apart,  so  that  it  could  be  compactly  wound  in  succcessive  layers 
upon  itself,  and  thus  a  current  could  be  made  to  pass  an  indefi- 
nite number  of  times  around  an  iron  bar,  and  the  power  of  the 
bar  to  attract  other  iron  multiplied  alike    somewhat  correspond- 

*  The  electro-magnet  of  Sturgeon,  with  its  armature,  and  the  opening  and 
closing  of  the  battery  circuit,  and  the  falling  and  restoration  of  the  armature, 
were  exhibited  in  a  course  of  lectures  at  the  New  York  Athenaeum,  in  1827. 
These  lectures  were  attended  by  the  colleagues  of  Prof.  Dana,  including  Prof. 
Morse.     Depositions  of  Mrs.  Dana  and  Prof.  Renwick. 


15 

ingly  and  this  with  the  use  of  a  comparatively  small  battery.  He 
also  for  the  first  time  employed  the  battery  of  many  pairs  to 
send  from  a  distance  a  current  through  insulated  wire  many 
times  wound  upon  itself,  around  a  horseshoe-shaped  soft  iron  bar. 
This  discovery  made  registering  electric  telegraphy  possible. 
Barlow,  of  England,  had  observed  in  1825  that  the  power  of  the 
galvanic  current  he  employed  diminished  with  the  increase  of  dis- 
tance from  the  battery ;  but  Henry's  researches  had  shown  that  by 
causing  the  wire  to  pass  a  great  number  of  times  around  a  bar  of 
iron,  it  was  possible  to  produce  the  physical  result  of  motion 
with  a  feeble  current  at  relatively  great  distances  from  its  source. 
Barlow  had  employed  a  quantity  battery.  Henry  employed  an 
intensity  battery. 

As  yet  there  was  no  practical  registering  electro-magnetic  tele- 
graph. But  it  was  possible.  Ability  had  been  conferred  to  instan- 
taneously render  soft  iron  magnetic  at  a  distance,  when  it  would 
attract  to  itself  other  iron,  and  to  deprive  it  as  instantaneously  of 
magnetism,  when  it  would  release  the  iron  which  it  had  previously 
attracted.  Here  was  the  power  to  produce  practical,  effective 
reciprocal  motion.  A  pen  or  pencil  or  stylus  could  be  moved  back- 
wards or  forwards,  or  up  and  down,  or  alternately,  from  one  side 
to  the  other.  It  remained  for  invention,  for  further  research,  for 
patience  and  perseverance  to  take  these  discoveries  and  apply  them 
as  experiment  should  demonstrate  the  necessity  and  practicability, 
and  produce  the  working  telegraph. 

Fechner  says,  in  1829,  "There  is  no  doubt  that  if  twenty-four 
different  multipliers  —  the  number  of  the  letters  —  were  in  Leipsic, 
for  example,  and  the  insulated  wire  conducted  under  ground  to 
Dresden,  we  should  have  a  medium,  not  very  costly  perhaps, 
through  which  determined  characters  could  be  sent  instan- 
taneously from  one  to  the  other."  He  says  further,  in  1832,  that 
"  by  the  employment  of  a  very  thinly  wound  (insulated)  copper 
wire,  coated  with  silver,  of  which  one  foot  in  uncovered  condition 
weighed  1.95  grains,  a  pile  of  one  hundred  and  seven  small 
platinum  pairs  would  be  adequate  for  telegraphic  communications, 
ten  geographical  miles.  The  length  of  wire  for  such  a  distance 
both  ways  would  require  for  each  letter  twenty  miles  of  wire, 
which  would  involve  no  small  outlay."      Fechner  also  pointed  out 


16 


that  the  "  telegraphic  conduction  does  not  depend  on  the  great- 
ness of  the  pairs  of  plates,  and  the  strength  of  the  conducting 
fluid  (quantity  of  electricity),  but,  on  the  contrary,  on  the  number 
of  the  pairs  of  plates  in  the  pile ;  and  would  increase  in  direct 
relation  to  the  thickness  of  the  wire." 

Ohme's  law  of  1825,  and  Schweigger's  multiplier  of  1820,  were 
here  first  traced  out  to  their  practical  end,  of  a  galvanic  semaphore. 
The  conditions  were  expressed,  on  which  the  success  of  the  needle 
invention  depended  :  —  numerous  pairs,  a  large  conducting  wire, 
multiplied  convolutions  of  insulated  wire,  —  all  were  wrapped  up 
in  these  few  clear  sentences  of  Fechner  before  1832. 

In  1832  (from  1820-1832),  Schilling  of  St.  Petersburg  devised  a 
telegraph  upon  the  principle  of  deflecting  a  needle. 

Gauss  and  Weber  of  Gottingen,  in  1833-34,  caused  a  magnetic 
bar  to  be  deflected  to  one  side  or  the  other  at  will,  and  produce 
movements  which  they  interpreted  in  letters  of  the  alphabet. 
Cooke  and  afterwards  Cooke  and  Wheatstone  of  England  followed 
in  this  line  of  experiment,  and  produced  their  needle  telegraphs 
in  1836  and  1837. 

Steinheil  of  Munich,  in  1836,  emphyyed  a  magneto-electrical 
machine,  in  lectures  to  his  classes,  to  produce  sounds  upon  a 
series  of  bells  of  different  tones,  which  were  readily  translated. 
Up  to  this  time,  no  practical,  working  registering  telegraph  had 
been  invented.  For  moderate  distances  the  telegraph  was  possible, 
but  had  not  been  rendered  practicable.  Prof.  Henry  had  remarked 
that  the  force  of  the  current  from  a  battery  of  many  pairs  was 
not  sensibly  diminished  by  transmission  through  a  wire  of  one 
thousand  and  sixty  feet.  There  remained  both  discovery  and 
invention  to  meet  the  necessity,  and  these  were  the  great  services, 
as  I  consider  them,  in  the  labors  of  the  life  whose  sunset  has  just 
passed  before  us. 

In  1832,  Prof.  Samuel  Finley  Breese  Morse  was  returning  from 
France  on  board  the  packet  ship  Sully.  Among  the  topics  of  con- 
versation on  that  memorable  voyage  was  the  possibility  of  the 
practical  electric  telegraph  in  view  of  the  recent  discoveries  in  the 
departments  of  electricity,  magnetism  and  galvanism.  This  possi- 
bility was  recognized  bj'  electricians  generally,  but  its  practicability 
could  be  demonstrated  only  by  patient  and  faithful  experiment  in 
the  line  of  a  well-thought-out  plan.     The  magnitude  of  the  difli- 


17 


culties  that  lay  in  the  way  could  not  be  known  till  they  had  been 
surmounted.  During  that  voyage  Prof.  Morse  became  inspired 
with  the  idea  of  a  telegraph, — not  a  signal,  electric  semaphore,  not 
a  needle  apparatus  using  evanescent  signals,  but  a  recording  elec- 
tro-magnetic telegraph,  and  the  plans  and  devices  were  made  and 
the  resolution  formed  by  him  to  enter  upon  and  prosecute  the 
necessary  experimental  researches  required  to  produce  the  grand 
result  he  had  conceived . 

Prof.  Morse  had  in  his  college  course  attended  the  lectures  of 
Professor  Silliman,  which  were  of  an  advanced  and  high  order, 
covering  especially  all  that  was  known  in  1808-1810  of  galvanic 
electricity ;  and  also  the  lectures  of  Professor  (afterward  Presi- 
dent) Day  experimentally  illustrated,  on  frictional  electricity. 
In  1827  his  college  recollections  were  revived  and  his  interest  in 
these  subjects  renewed  by  his  attendance  on  the  lectures  of  his 
colleague,  Prof.  James  Freeman  Dana,  in  the  New  York  Athe- 
naeum. It  is  clear  that  he  believed  that  there  was  enough  discov- 
ered and  known  to  him  to  enable  him  to  invent  the  registering 
electro-magnetic  telegraph.  It  is  clear  that  he  exhibited  diagrams 
illustrating  his  devices  of  apparatus,  and  discussed  with  others 
the  combinations  to  produce  lines  and  dots  constituting  an  alphabet, 
which  of  itself  demonstrates  the  existence  in  his  mind  of  a  plan  of 
the  work  of  registration.  It  may  be  fairly  presumed  that  Prof. 
Morse,  whose  previous  life  had  not  been  devoted  to  scientific  pur- 
suits, on  that  occasion  gathered  from  all  with  whom  he  conversed 
on  the  subject,  all  they  were  in  condition  to  impart.  Before  com- 
pleting the  voyage  Prof.  Morse  had,  according  to  his  own  account, 
worked  out  and  committed  to  paper  the  general  plan  of  his  regis- 
tering telegraph,*  and  before  the  close  of  the  year  he  had  made  a 
part  of  the  apparatus  to  test  his  plan. 

If  there  may  have  been  others  who  might  have  made  the  inven- 
tion, it  is  certain  that  he  alone  at  that  time  had  the  inventive 
talent,  and  the  necessary  measure  of  faith  and  patience  of  which 

*  It  will  not  be  doubted  by  any  who  know  him  that  Dr.  Charles  T.  Jackson 
of  our  city,  who  was  a  fellow-passenger  on  the  Sully,  cheerfully  imparted  Ms 
conviction  of  the  possibility  and  practicability  of  the  telegraph.  "  But  the 
testimony  to  the  paternity  of  the  idea  in  Morse's  mind,  and  to  his  acts  and 
drawings  on  board  the  ship,  is  ample."  (Am.  Encyclopedia.)  See  Appendix,  B. 


18 


resolution  and  conquest  are  the  offspring,  to  accomplish  it.  He 
had  the  clearness  of  vision  which  enabled  him  to  see  that,  in  spite 
of  any  difficulties  incidental  to  so  great  a  new  departure,  there  was 
enough  positively  known  and  certain,  to  insure  the  success  of  a 
recording  telegraph  to  whoever  would  pay  the  price,  and  he  had  the 
genius  to  appreciate  the  privilege  as  well  as  the  honor  of  the  self- 
sacrifice  with  which  the  great  gift  to  mankind  could  be  purchased. 
Of  the  progress  of  Prof.  Morse's  invention  from  1832  to  Septem- 
ber, 1837,  when  he  publicly  exhibited  his  registering  telegraph, 
those  who  are  familiar  with  the  difficulties  of  invention  generally, 
can  form  some  idea  ;  how  many  devices  he  had  tested  and  thrown 
aside  the  world  will  probably  never  know.  He  experimented  at 
great  length  in  the  direction  of  a  chemical  telegraph,  but  was  not 
satisfied  with  his  results.  His  mind  settled  upon  the  idea  of  a 
permanent  visible  mark  or  succession  of  marks  upon  paper  requiring 
pressure  to  make.  I  am  not  aware  that  at  this  early  period  he  had 
any  idea  of  employing  as  the  medium  of  transmitting  intelligence 
the  sound,  which  accompanies  each  mark  as  made  in  the  modern 
Morse  instrument.  But  the  principle  was  distinctly  recognized  in 
his  application  for  a  patent  in  1838,  and  from  this  period  of  view 
his  instrument  was  at  the  outset  an  acoustic  indicator  as  well  as 
a  recording  telegraph. 

In  1835,  Morse  made  his  discovery  of  the  relay,  the  most  bril- 
liant of  all  the  achievements  to  which  his  name  must  be  forever 
attached.  It  was  the  discovery  of  a  means  by  which  the  current, 
which  through  distance  from  its  source,  had  become  feeble,  could 
be  reinforced  or  renewed.  This  discovery,  according  to  the  differ- 
ent objects  for  which  it  is  employed,  is  variously  known  as  the 
registering  magnet,  the  local  circuit,  the  marginal  circuit,  the  re- 
peater, etc.  It  made  transmission  from  one  point  on  a  main  line 
through  indefinitely  great  distances,  and  through  an  indefinite 
number  of  branch  lines,  and  to  an  indefinite  number  of  way  sta- 
tions, and  registration  at  all,  possible  and  practicable,  from  a 
single  act  of  a  single  operator. 

It  was  my  privilege  to  be  shown  by  Prof.  Morse,  in  1841  (and  I 
shall  never  forget  the  charm  with  which  he  invested  the  two  hours 
he  gave  to  me,  an  utter  stranger),  one  of  the  instruments  which 
illustrated  his  inventive  genius.     It  resembled,  in  external  appear- 


19 

ance,  a  small  melodeon  having  a  key-board  on  which  were  the  let- 
ters, the  figures,  periods,  commas,  etc.  These  keys  were  levers. 
The  ends  of  the  levers  distant  from  the  seat  of  the  operator  were 
in  connection  with  brass  circular  disks,  upon  the  rims  of  which 
were  prominences  and  depressions  of  unequal  length,  so  arranged 
that  the  prominences  would  close,  and  the  depressions  open,  the 
magnetic  circuit,  and  thus  magnetize  and  demagnetize  a  bar  of 
soft  iron.  When  magnetized,  the  bar  of  iron  drew  to  itself 
one  end  of  a  lever,  having  an  iron  armature,  to  the  other  end  of 
which  a  pencil  or  pen  was  attached,  the  point  of  which,  by  this 
action  of  the  magnet,  was  pressed  against  a  moving  ribbon  of 
paper ;  when  the  bar  was  demagnetized,  the  lever  was  restored 
to  its  original  position  by  a  spring,  and  the  pencil  lifted  from 
the  paper.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  an  arrangement  of  prom- 
inences and  depressions,  or  conductors  and  non-conductors,  on 
the  brass  circles  might  be  so  contrived  that  each  key  should  pro- 
duce its  own  particular  set  of  lines,  dots  and  spaces.  This  was 
the  first  practical  registering  telegraph.*  Cooke,  of  England,  when 
a  student  of  anatomy  at  Heidelberg,  in  1836,  saw  the  Schilling 
telegraph  in  the  rooms  of  Professor  Moncke,  and  conceived  the 
idea  of  an  improved  telegraph  from  the  exhibition  which  he  wit- 
nessed at  that  time,  in  which  the  deflection  of  the  magnetic  needle 
was  caused  by  the  electric  current.  He  produced  in  that  year  an 
instrument  illustrating  his  plan,  and  afterwards  associated  himsel 
with  Prof.  Wheatstone,  and  they  together  invented  a  much  more 
elaborate  apparatus  and  brought  it  out  in  1837.  They  employed 
at  that  time  five  magnetic  needles  and  coils,  and  either  five  or  six 
wires.  Morse  used  only  one.  The  telegraph  of  Cooke  and  Wheat- 
stone,  in  its  greatest  perfection,  addressed  itself  to  the  eye  for  the 
interpretation  of  its  signals  —  it  made  no  record.  Morse's  tele- 
graph recorded  its.  message  in  permanent  characters. 

The  piano  key-board  of  Morse  and  his  complex  devices  for 
interrupting  and   closing  the  circuit  gave  place  as  the  result  of 

*  We  may  except  possibly  the  experimental  results  of  Steinheil,  not  pub- 
lished until  1838  (and  which  at  the  time  were  to  Prof.  Morse  absolutely  un- 
known), which  made  combinations  of  dots  upon  a  ribbon  of  paper,  as  well  as 
produced  sounds  upon  series  of  bells.  The  invention  never  came  into  gen- 
eral use,  as  Steinheil  abandoned  his  own  device,  and  adopted  Morse's  in  its 
place,  as  soon  as  it  became  known  to  him. 


20 

practical  experiment  before  the  issue  of  the  patent  to  the  very 
simple  device  of  the  single  key,  with  which  we  are  all  familiar. 
The  pencil  and  pen  gave  place  to  a  stylus,  —  a  simple,  hard  point 
resting  upon  a  ribbon  of  paper  moving  at  a  uniform  rate  immedi- 
ately over  a  groove.  His  plan  from  the  outset  contemplated  a 
single  current  and  circuit.  After  the  discovery  of  Steinheil  that 
what  had  been  observed  by  Watson  and  Franklin  in  regard  to 
factional  electricity  —  that  the  earth  might  be  used  for  a  part  of 
the  circuit — was  applicable  to  galvanic  electricity,  Morse  adopted 
the  arrangement  of  a  single  line  of  wire  between  the  stations. 

It  is  not  possible  within  the  time  allotted  me  to  enumerate  the 
inventions  that  have  been  made  contributing  to  the  perfection  of 
the  working  telegraph,  to  the  transition  from  the  trough  to  the 
constant  battery  of  Daniell,  first  brought  out  in  1836,  and  with- 
out which,  or  its  equivalent,  the  telegraph  would  be  still  in  its 
infancy,  and  the  improvements  that  have  been  made  upon  it  since  ; 
nor  of  the  transition  from  the  mercury  cups  to  the  thumb-screw  of 
Dr.  Hare  and  the  convenient  switch  ;  nor  of  the  sounder  ;  or  the 
insulators ;  or  the  paratonnerre  (lightning  guard)  ;  or  of  numer- 
ous other  devices  and  varied  forms  of  apparatus,  covered  by  more 
than  a  thousand  separate  patents  that  have  been  taken  out  in 
Europe  and  in  this  country. 

On  October  3,  1837,  Prof.  Morse  filed  his  caveat  in  the  Patent 
Office  to  secure  his  invention.  On  the  7th  of  April,  1838,  he  made 
his  application  for  a  patent,  which  passed  the  examiner  in  the 
same  year,  and,  on  the  20th  of  June,  1840,  was  issued.  The  first 
recording  telegraph  was  brought  into  practical  use,  May  27th, 
1844,  between  Baltimore  and  Washington. 


INVENTION   AND    SCIENTIFIC   DISCOVERT. 

It  often  happens,  after  the  crown  of  success  has  been  attained 
by  the  faithful  experimentalist,  that  the  germ  of  the  hypothesis 
upon  which  he  bestowed  his  thought  and  labor  is  claimed  to  have 
been  entertained,  at  an  earlier  period,  by  some  one  else. 

The  claim  alleged  is  for  the  specific  scientific  discovery  which  is 
said  to  underlie  the  invention.  Now,  scientific  discoveries  are  of 
various  classes  and  degrees  of  merit.      There  are  simple  facts, 


21 


which,  like  material  gems,  reward  an  explorer  in  a  fruitful  field, 
and  demand  little  effort  beyond  the  exercise  of  attention  and  a 
capacity  to  collect  and  record.  There  are  others  in  which  the  laws 
of  physical  force  and  chemical  composition  are  determined  by  sys- 
tematic experiment.  There  are  still  others  in  which  abstract  rela- 
tions are  brought  to  light,  as  in  mathematics  ;  and  others  in  which 
the  properties  conferred  upon  matter  by  organic  life  are  the  sub- 
jects of  research,  as  in  physiology.  Achievements  in  these  several 
fields  have  a  certain  value  as  an  evidence  of  culture  and  a  title  to 
social  consideration.  There  is  another  class  in  which  success  is 
sometimes  rewarded  by  pecuniary  as  well  as  social  distinction.  It 
is  the  class  in  which  the  object  of  discovery  is  a  device  by  which 
the  forces  of  nature  or  the  qualities  of  matter  may  be  made  to 
render  new  service  to  civilization. 

In  this  class,  discovery  has  usually,  for  its  first  step,  the  percep- 
tion or  appreciation  of  a  want.  Its  next  step  is  speculation  as  to 
the  devices  by  which  the  want  may  be  met.  Then  there  is  the 
production  of  a  crude  contrivance,  by  which  to  test  the  soundness 
of  the  speculation.  Then  come  modifications  and  new  trials,  and 
ultimately  what  seems  success.  Then  comes  expansion  of  the 
process,  approaching  a  working-scale.  Trial  on  the  larger  plan 
reveals  fresh  imperfections  ;  new  relations  appear,  and  new  expe- 
dients have  to  be  resorted  to.  The  devices  which,  at  the  com- 
mencement, were  distinguished  on  account  of  their  complexity, 
are  replaced  by  others  of  marked  simplicity.  Again  success  seems 
to  be  attained.  Now  comes  the  grand  economy  and  organization 
of  the  enterprise  for  rendering  the  discovery  available  and  useful. 

The  rank  of  the  scientific  discovery ,  or  series  of  discoveries,  which 
make  up  such  an  invention,  is  high  in  proportion  as  the  intrinsic 
difficulties  to  be  overcome  have  been  great,  and  as  the  investigation 
and  solution  of  the  problem  presented  have  been  exhaustive  ;  and 
low  in  proportion  as  the  difficulties  were  inconsiderable,  and  as  the 
investigation  has  been  superficial  and  the  solution  defective. 

It  rarely  happens  that  all  the  stages  of  an  important  and  useful 
discovery  of  this  class  are  presided  over  by  one  mind.  More  fre- 
quently the  earlier  and  later  stages  fall  into  different  hands.  In 
this  event  the  rewards  are  divided.  The  nearer  one  is  to  the  con- 
clusion of  the  series,  the  larger  uniformly  is  his  measure  of  mate- 


22 

rial  return.  Where  all  have  been  the  offspring  of  one  mind,  the 
honors  and  pecuniary  emoluments  enter  alike  into  the  reward. 
Where  the  naked  speculation  or  suggestion  only  can  be  claimed, 
or  where  a  crude  device  merely  had  been  proposed  and  success 
predicted,  the  author  will  be  assigned  a  place  in  the  world's  esteem, 
distinguished  in  some  degree  in  proportion  to  the  clearness  and 
details  of  his  plans  and  predictions.  If  it  be  not  as  high  as  the 
man  of  suggestion  sometimes  deems  his  due,  it  is  because  the  ap- 
plause of  mankind  seems  to  be  reserved  for  its  heroes,  — the  men 
who  have  not  only  encountered  difficulty,  but  made  its  conquest,  — 
rather  than  for  its  men  of  speculation,  whose  influence  on  the  well- 
being  of  the  race  is  more  transient,  or,  if  lasting,  less  direct. 

The  common  sense  of  the  world  has  made  a  uniform  and,  we 
must  believe,  a  just  discrimination  in  its  award  of  merit  to  him 
who,  patiently  following  the  lead  of  a  conception,  has  brought  to 
successful  issue  and  recognition  new  agencies  for  advancing  civili- 
zation, rather  than  to  him  who  equally  with  the  former  had  the 
same  happy  conception,  and  had  it  even  at  an  earlier  date,  but 
neglected  the  duties  nature  prescribed  as  the  condition  of  fruition. 

"The  step  from  the  first  more  or  less  vague  conception  of  a  new 
truth  to  its  conclusive  demonstration  is  a  matter  of  far  more  im- 
portance and  difficulty  than  the  happy  and  sometimes,  to  all  ap- 
pearances, intuitive  guesses  which  have  invariably  preceded  every 
great  discovery.  Newton  formed  a  right  estimate  of  his  own  claims 
when  he  ascribes  his  success  to  the  patient  and  laborious  perti- 
nacity with  which  he  kept  fast  hold  of  an  idea  until,  by  long  thinking 
and  varied  experiment,  he  has  proved  either  its  truth  or  its  false- 
hood."    (Quarterly  Review :  Newton  as  a  Scientific  Discoverer.) 

CLAIMS    OF    DISCOVERERS    AND    INVENTORS. 

It  is  natural  and  proper  when  a  great  and  useful  art  has  been 
born  to  civilization,  that  all  persons  and  especially  the  friends  of 
the  persons  who  have  had  a  share  in  the  production  and  perfection 
of  the  art  should  feel  jealously  alive  to  the  just  distribution  of  the 
honors  which  follow  such  an  event. 

Such  honors  are  sometimes,  not  infrequently  indeed,  unfairly 
distributed.      Adventitious    circumstances    may   cause    mistake. 


23 


The  memory  is  sometimes  at  fault.  The  claims  of  some  may  be  ex- 
aggerated. The  just  claims  of  others  may  be  overlooked.  It  seems 
to  be  required  of  me,  in  the  effort  to  comply  with  your  request,  that  I 
should  on  this  occasion  discuss  this  matter  somewhat  at  length, 
although  with  the  chance  of  occasional  repetition.  It  will 
serve  to  open  up  the  subject,  if  we  consider  a  little  carefully 
the  meaning  of  some  of  the  words  we  use.  A  tele-graph  is  liter- 
ally a  writing  at  a  distance.  Strictly  speaking,  the  earlier  forms 
of  signal  apparatus  were  not  telegraphs ;  they  were  semaphores, 
—  signal-bearers. 

The  signal  may  be  addressed  to  the  eye  or  to  the  ear.  If  to 
the  former  it  would  be  a  visual,  to  the  latter  an  acoustic  semaphore. 
Franklin,  Watson,  De  Luc,  Cavallo,  and  others  employed  friction 
electricity  to  flash  powder  and  fire  alcohol.  These  experiments 
heralded  an  electric  visual  semaphore.  They  also  rang  bells  by 
electricity,  and  in  so  doing  foreshadowed  an  acoustic  semaphore. 

The  plans  of  Le  Sage,  Lomond,  Reusser,  Boeckman,  Salva,  Be- 
tancourt  and  Ronalds  were  of  the  class  of  electric  semaphores. 
That  of  Harrison  G.  Dyer  approached  nearly  to  that  of  an  electric 
telegraph. 

Voltaic  semaphores  belong  necessarily  to  this  century.  They 
were  only  possible  after  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  current 
might  be  made  effective  at  a  distance  by  the  use  of  the  pile  or  battery 
of  many  pairs.  Soemmering's,  in  1809-11,  was  the  first  of  the  class, 
and  established  the  fact  that  visible  effects  could  be  produced  at  a 
distance  of  10,000  feet.  (Kuhn,  1866.)  His  device  was  a  visual  sem- 
aphore. Bain's  so-called  electro-chemical  plan,  of  1846,  was  a  vol- 
taic telegraph.  He  employed  a  battery,  but  not  a  magnet,  and 
wrote  and  printed  with  Morse's  alphabet. 

Electro-magnetic  semaphores  were  possible  only  after  the  dis- 
covery of  OErsted,  in  1819,  and  the  discovery  of  the  multiplier, 
in  1820,  by  Schweigger  and  Poggendorff.  The  first  of  these  was  pro- 
jected by  Ampere,  but  never  carried  out.  It  was  a  needle  device. 
Visible  signs  were  to  be  made  by  the  deflection  of  a  needle,  the  vol- 
taic current  being  sent  through  a  multiplier,  or  long  link-shaped  coil 
of  insulated  wire,  within  which  a  needle  was  freely  suspended  or 
supported.  The  next  seems  to  have  been  Schilling's,  made  some 
time  between   1820  and  1832,  a  rude  copy  of  which,  made  by 


24 


Professor  Moncke,  of  Heidelberg,  awoke  at  a  later  period  (1836) 
the  inventive  genius  of  Cooke.  The  next  was  that  of  Gauss  and 
Weber,  in  1833-34.  Then  came  Cooke's  in  1836,  and  Cooke  and 
Wheatstone's  in  1837 ;  and  at  about  the  same  time  Steinheil's. 
These'were  not  writing  or  printing  instruments.  They  made  eva- 
nescent signs,  which  could  be  observed,  translated  and  recorded. 
Steinheil  afterward  (1837)  completed  a  magneto-electric  recording 
or  writing  telegraph ;  which  showed  that  the  result  was  possible 
and  practicable,  though  not  practical.  Electro-magnetic  telegraphs 
were  not  practicable  before  an  intensity  battery  had  been  employed 
in  connection  with  a  distant  electro-magnet,  surrounded  with  a 
multiplied  insulated  coil.  This  was  first  actually  done  through  a 
distance  of  1,060  feet,  in  1828-29,  by  Prof.  Henry.  This  experi- 
ment made  it  possible  that  with  increased  power  in  the  battery,  with 
improvements  in  the  magnet,  and  inventions  of  special  mechanical 
devices,  an  electro-magnetic  telegraph  for  registration  at  dis- 
tances sufficiently  great  to  meet  the  wants  of  the  every-day  world, 
might  be  devised. 

The  invention,  however,  in  its  most  elementary  condition,  was 
not  made  for  four  years,  and  then  without  a  knowledge  of  these 
experiments,  nor  was  it  brought  into  working  condition  for  three 
more,  and  then  at  first  without  employing  either  of  these  essential 
elements,  to  wit,  the  battery  of  multiplied  pairs,  the  magnet  of 
multiplied  coil,  and  the  long  conductor  ;  and  more  than  two  years 
additional  before  a  caveat  was  lodged,  and  three  before  a  patent 
was  granted,  and  still  four  years  elapsed  before  the  invention  was 
in  successful  public  service. 

This  delay  between  the  discovery  of  a  scientific  truth  and  its 
application  to  the  useful  arts  is  not  unusual. 

Interval  after  the  possibility  of  an  invention  before  the  invention 
was  made. 

After  Winckler's  experiment  at  Leipsic  in  1744,  with  a  Leyden  jar 
and  a  long  conducting  wire,  and  Watson's  experiments  in  1747-8, 
with  a  circuit  of  two  miles  of  wire  and  two  of  earth ;  and  Frank- 
lin's experiments,  from  1748  to  1754,  exhibiting  reciprocal  mo- 
tion, rotation  of  wheels,  ringing  of  bells,  firing  of  combustibles, 
etc.,  it  was  possible  to  produce  electric  signals  conveying  intelli- 
gence. 


25 

The  first  that  appeared  was  that  of  Le  Sage,  in  1774,  after  an  in- 
terval of  twenty  years  ;  *  then  Reusser's,  in  1794,  after  forty  years  ; 
then  Salva's,  with  a  conducting  wire  of  many  miles,  in  1796,  after 
about  forty-two  years ;  then  Betancourt's,  of  twenty-six  miles,  in 
1797-98,  after  forty-three  years;  then  Ronald's,  in  1816,  after 
sixty-two  years ;  and  then  Harrison  G.  Dyar's,  in  1828,  after 
seventy-four  years. 

After  the  discovery  of  the  pile  ofvolta  in  1800,  it  was  possible  to 
invent : — 

Soemmering^  electro-chemical  semaphore,  which  did  not  appear 
till  1809-11,  after  eleven  years.  J.  Redman  Coxe's  (of  Philadel- 
phia) suggestion  dates  1816,  after  sixteen  years.  Bain's  electro- 
chemical recording  telegraph,  which  did  not  appear  till  1846,  after 
forty-six  years. 

After  (Ersted's  discoveries- of  1819  and  1820,  and  especially  of 
Schweigger's  multiplier,  constructed  with  insulated  wire  immedi- 
ately after,  it  was  possible  to  produce  Ampere's  suggestion  (or 
invention),  which  appeared  the  same  year,  and  he  remarks  that  a 
like  result  had  been  suggested  by  La  Place. 

Schilling's  invention  was  in  progress  from  1820  to  1832  —  twelve 
years.  Gauss  and  Weber's  appeared  in  1833-34  —  fourteen  years. 
Cooke  and  Wheatstone's  in  1836-37  —  sixteen  years. 

After  Sturgeon's  electro-magnet,  in  1826,  when  an  electro-magnetic 
recording  telegraph  was  possible  for  short  distances,  Morse's  con- 
ception came,  in  1832,  after  six  years. 

After  Henry's  electro-magnet,  wound  with  insulated  wire  in  1828, 
published  in  1831,  which  made  electro-magnetic  telegraphy  possi- 
ble for  increased  distances,  came  Morse's  receiving  or  relay  bat- 
tery and  recording  telegraph,  invented  in  1832,  and  in  working 
condition  in  1836,  after  an  interval  of  five  years.  It  was  publicly 
exhibited  in  1837,  after  six  years  ;  and  operated  between  Balti- 
more and  Washington  in  1844,  after  thirteen  years. 

After  Faraday's  discovery  of  magneto-electricity,  in  1831,  came 
Steinheil's  telegraph  in  1837,  after  six  years.  Steinheil  had  demon- 
strated the  practicability  of  using  the  earth  for  a  part  of  the 
electro-magnetic  circuit  in  1838.  It  was  not  used  in  this  country 
till  1845. 

*  Lomond's  telegraph  seems  to  have  been  produced  as  early  as  1757,  but 
only  operated  between  one  room  and  another. 


As  we  have  now  fixed  some  of  the  more  important  dates  and 
intervals,  let  us  put  on  record  two  or  three  more  that  we  need  to 
bear  in  mind,  —  recalling  that  while  Soemmering  and  Bain  needed 
only  the  voltaic  pile  or  a  battery  of  many  pairs;  Schilling,  Gauss 
and  Weber,  Cooke  and  Wheatstone  needed  in  addition  the  gal- 
vanic multiplier  ;  Morse  the  battery  and  electro-magnet,  and  Stein- 
heil  a  magneto-electric  machine. 

Soemmering's  voltaic  semaphore  preceded  Schilling's  needle 
semaphore  by  a  dozen  years  and  more. 

In  point, of  time,  Morse's  invention  on  the  Sully  preceded 
Cooke's  at  Heidelberg  by  four  years  —  1832-1836. 

In  point  of  construction  and  actual  working,  Morse  preceded 
Cooke  by  a  year  — 1835-1836. 

In  point  of  exhibition  to  the  public,  Cooke  and  Wheatstone  were 
coincident  with  Morse  —  1837. 

In  point  of  actual  use  by  the  public,  Cooke  and  Wheatstone 
preceded  Morse  by  six  years  — 1838-1844. 

These  relations  of  discovery  to  invention  and  practical  applica- 
tion may  be  illustrated  in  tabular  form :  — 


Constant  bat- 
tery of  Daniell, 
1835,  without 
which  none 
would  have  suc- 


Volta,  1800. 


CErsted,  1819. 
Sehweigger,  1820. 


Electro-chemical  semaphore. 

Soemmering's  in  1809-11. 

Bain's  electro-chemical  telegraph  in  1846. 

Needle  semaphores. 

Ampere's  in  1820. 

Schilling's,  1820-1832. 

Gauss  and  Weber's  in  1833-34. 

Cooke's  in  1836. 

Cooke  and  Wheatstone's  in  1837. 


Arago  in  1820. 
Sturgeon  iu  1825. 
Henry  in  1829. 


Faraday  in  1831. 


<      Recording  telegraph  of  Morse  in  1832. 

f     Magneto-electric  telegraph. 
I      Steinheil's  in  1837. 

Wheatstone's  later  business  alphabet  sema- 
phore. 

Having  thus  before  us  the  great  facts  in  the  history  of  the  new 
art,  we  are  in  condition  to  examine  more  carefully  into  the  claims 
to  originality  and  priority  of  the  discoverers  and  inventors. 

Let  us  have  distinct  ideas  in  our  assignment  of  credit.  The 
discovery  of  a  law,  or  the  invention  of  a  device,  may  be  strictly 
original  to  two  or  more  persons.  It  may  be  made  by  one  in  igno- 
rance that  it  had  been  made  by  another  before  him,  or  the  two 
may  have  been  coincident  in  time  as  well  as  result. 


27 


Volta  was  alone  in  the  invention  of  the  pile. 

Soemmering  was  alone  in  observing  that  the  current  of  the  voltaic 
pile  might  be  projected  to  great  distances  with  as  great  effective 
force  to  produce  chemical  decompositions  as  at  moderate  distances. 

CErsted  was  alone  in  originality  and  time  in  observing  the 
deflection  of  the  needle  by  the  galvanic  current. 

.Schwe"igger  was  coincident  with  Poggendorff  in  originality  and 
time  in  the  multiplier  of  insulated  wire. 

Arago  was  alone  in  magnetizing  iron  in  the  axis  of  a  long 
oblique  spiral. 

Sturgeon  was  alone  in  the  electro-magnet  with  the  loose  oblique 
spiral ;  and  later  in  amalgamating  the  zinc  element  of  the  battery. 

Moll  and  Henry  were  coincident  in  the  quantity  magnet  with  a 
single  pair. 

Henry  was  alone  in  the  insulated  concentric  coil  and  multiplied 
windings  applied  to  a  horseshoe-shaped  bar  of  iron  with  a  single 
pair  and  with  many  pairs.  Henry  was  alone  in  the  insulated  con- 
centric wire  of  many  windings  and  battery  of  many  pairs  at  a 
distance  from  the  electro-magnet. 

Now  all  these  discoveries,  in  so  far  as  the  attribute  of  origi- 
nality is  concerned,  were  in  some  degree  suggested,  somewhat  in 
their  order  of  succession,  by  the  publication  of  the  discoveries 
which  preceded  them.  CErsted  deflected  a  needle  slowly  with  a 
single  wire,  Schweigger  and  Poggendorff  quickly  with  the  multi- 
plied coils. 

Arago  made  straight  hard-iron  (steel)  magnetic  by  a  single  loose 
long  coil.  Sturgeon  made  a  horse  shoe  of  soft  iron  magnetic  with 
a  loose  long  coil  of  sixteen  turns  and  lifted  nine  pounds  in 
1825-6.  Moll  made  a  closer  coil  of  eighty-three  turns  and  lifted 
seventy-five  pounds,  and  finally  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  pounds, 
in  182.3.  Henry,  with  greatly  multiplied  coils,  lifted  more  than  a 
ton  in  1830.  All  these  operated  by  a  battery  of  a  single  pair  of 
plates  and  little  interval  between  the  battery  and  the  magnet. 

Now  Henry  started  out,  before  the  publication  of  Moll,  with  a 
new  combination  of  many  pairs,  and  distance  between  the  battery 
and  the  magnet,  and  found  as  the  experiment  seemed  to  show,  that 
the  effect  of  the  current  in  magnetizing  soft  iron  at  this  distance 
was  at  least  not  appreciably  less  at  a  distance  of  one  thousand 
and  sixty  feet  than  at  points  near  the  battery. 


28 


The  lifting  of  great  weights  by  the  single  pair  of  large  plates 
near  the  magnet,  by  Sturgeon,  Moll,  and  Henry,  was  of  compara- 
tively little  moment  to  the  future  telegraph.  It  was  the  necessity 
of  producing  a  certain  but  not  great  lifting  effect  at  a  distance  that 
the  telegraph  required. 

Let  us  make  the  discovery  of  Professor  Henry  clear.  He  found 
that  a  battery  of  a  single  pair,  the  zinc  plate  four  by  seven  inches, 
at  a  distance  of  eight  feet,  operating  through  a  coil  of  insulated 
wire  eight  feet  long,  wound  around  a  small  horseshoe  magnet,  pro- 
duced magnetism  enough  to  lift  four  and  a  half  pounds.  At  a  dis- 
tance of  one  thousand  and  sixty  feet  it  lifted  but  half  an  ounce, 
only  T|-4  as  much.  By  now  substituting  a  Cruikshanks'  battery,  in 
which  was  exactly  the  same  amount  of  zinc  surface,  —  but  in  twen- 
ty-five plates  instead  of  one,  —  the  magnet,  at  a  distance  of  one 
thousand  and  sixty  feet,  as  before,  lifted  eight  ounces.  That  is, 
by  dividing  the  zinc  plate  into  twenty-five  plates,  and  putting  each 
with  its  fellow  of  copper  into  a  separate  cell,  the  power  to  lift  at  a 
distance  of  one  thousand  and  sixty  feet  was  increased  sixteen 
times. 

Of  all  the  brilliant  researches  of  which  this  was  a  small  part, 
this  is  the  one  of  significance  in  its  relations  to  telegraphy. 

It  was  the  recognition  of  the  relation  of  the  intensity  battery  to 
electro-magnetic  effects  at  a  distance.  It  does  not  detract  from  its 
importance  that  chemical  effects  had  been  produced  by  an  intensity 
battery  at  a  distance,  as  by  Hare's  deflagrator  in  1821,  any  more 
than  Soemmering's  voltaic  semaphore,  in  1811,  detracted  from  the 
importance  of  the  discovery  of  electro-magnetism  by  OErsted,  in 
1819,  and  the  needle  semaphore  of  Schilling  of  a  later  period. 


WHAT   THE   INVENTOR   OF   THE    ELECTRO-MAGNETIC    RECORDING   TELE- 
GRAPH  MUST   HAVE   KNOWN. 

What  was  needed  to  the  original  conception  of  the  Morse  record- 
ing telegraph  ? 

1.  A  knowledge  that  soft  iron,  bent  in  the  form  of  a  horseshoe 
could  be  magnetized  by  sending  a  galvanic  current  through  a  coil 
wound  round  the  iron,  and  that  it  would  lose  its  magnetism  when 
the  current  was  suspended. 


29 


2.  A  knowledge  that  such  a  magnet  had  been  made  to  lift  and 
drop  masses  of  iron  of  considerable  weight. 

3.  A  knowledge,  or  a  belief,  that  the  galvanic  current  could  be 
transmitted  through  wires  of  great  length. 

These  were  all.  Now  comes  the  conception  of  devices  for  em- 
ploying an  agent  which  could  produce  reciprocal  motion  to  effect 
registration,  and  the  invention  of  an  alphabet.  In  order  to  this 
invention,  it  must  be  seen  how  up  and  down  — ■  reciprocal  —  motion 
could  be  produced  by  the  opening  and  closing  of  the  circuit.  Into 
this  simple  band  of  vertical  tracery  of  paths  in  space  must  be 
thrown  the  shuttle  of  time  and  a  ribbon  of  paper.  It  must  be  seen 
how  a  lever  pen  alternately  dropping  upon  and  rising,  at  denned 
intervals,  from  a  fillet  of  paper,  moved  by  independent  clock-work, 
would  produce  the  fabric  of  the  alphabet  and  writing  and  printing. 

"Was  there  anything  required  to  produce  this  result  which  was 
not  known  to  Morse  ? 

Of  the  details  of  scientific  research  bearing  on  electro-magnetism, 
scattered  through  journals  in  various  languages,  Prof.  Morse  knew 
comparatively  little.  He  was  a  liberally  educated  gentleman,  de- 
voted to  the  art  of  painting.  He  had  had,  as  already  mentioned, 
somewhat  unusual  advantages.  He  had  attended  the  courses  of  lec- 
tures of  Prof.  Silliman  and  Prof.  Day,  embracing  the  sciences  of 
galvanism  and  electricity,  when  an  under-graduate,  in  1808-9-10, 
at  Yale  College.  He  had  been  an  assistant  to  Professor  Silliman 
in  his  laboratory  in  1822  and  the  years  following.  He  had,  at 
a  later  period,  attended  the  lectures  of  Professor  James  Freeman 
Dana,  before  the  Athenaeum  in  New  York,  and  witnessed  an  ori- 
ginal and  brilliant  course  of  experimental  lectures,  embracing 
all  that  was  known  in  1827  on  electro-magnetism.  Professor 
Renwick,  a  fellow-member  with  Professor  Morse  in  several  clubs, 
remembers  that,  before  the  visit  .of  the  latter  to  Europe,  in  1829, 
he  paid  much  attention  to  electricity  and  magnetism,  and  that 
he  was  studying  those  subjects  "  in  reference  to  the  plan  for  a  tele- 
graph." He  knew  generally,  when  he  stepped  on  board  the  Sully, 
in  1832,  that  a  soft  iron  borseshoe-shaped  bar  of  iron  could  be  ren- 
dered magnetic  while  a  current  of  galvanic  electricity  was  passing 
through  a  wire  wound  round  it,  and  he  knew  that  electricity  had 
been   transmitted,   apparently  instantaneously,  through  wires  of 


30 

miles  in  length,  by  Franklin  and  others.  In  the  course  of  conver- 
sation on  board  that  vessel,  the  topic  of  employing  electricity  to 
communicate  intelligence  at  a  distance  arose.  In  the  leisure  of 
ship  life  the  idea  of  a  recording  electric  telegraph  seized  Professor 
Morse's  mind.  He  knew,  for  he  had  witnessed  it  years  before,  that 
by  means  of  a  battery  and  an  electro-magnet,  reciprocal  motion 
could  be  produced.  He  knew  that  the  force  which  produced  it 
could  be  transmitted  along  a  wire.  He  believed  that  the  battery 
current  could  be  made,  through  an  electro-magnet,  to  produce 
physical  effects  at  a  distance.  He  saw  in  his  mind's  eye  the  ex- 
istence of  an  agent  and  a  medium  by  which  reciprocal  motion 
could  be  not  only  produced  but  controlled  at  a  distance.  The  ques- 
tion that  addressed  itself  to  him  at  the  outset  was  naturally  this  : 
How  can  I  make  use  of  the  simple  up-and-down  motion  of  opening 
and  closing  a  circuit  to  write  an  intelligible  message  at  one  end  of 
a  wire  and  at  the  same  time  print  it  at  the  other?  If  we  pause  a 
moment  to  consider  that  in  our  ordinary  writing  with  a  pen  upon 
paper  we  must  employ  at  least  a  hundred  differently  shaped  and 
proportioned  lines,  and  produce  them  by  many  hundred  combina- 
tions of  nerve  and  muscular  effort ;  and  that  in  printing  we  must 
have  not  less  than  about  thirty-six  letters  and  figures,  we  shall 
appreciate  the  grandeur  of  Morse's  conception,  in  which  any  mes- 
sage whatever  could  be  written  at  one  end  of  the  wire  and  printed 
with  perfect  distinctness  at  the  other,  for  permanent  preservation, 
at  the  rate  of  twenty-five  words  a  minute.  Like  many  a  kindred 
work  of  genius,  it  was  in  nothing  more  wonderful  than  in  its  sim- 
plicity. First,  he  caused  a  continuous  ribbon  or  strip  of  paper  to 
move  under  a  pencil  by  clock-work  that  could  be  wound  up.  The 
paper  moved  horizontally.  The  pencil  moved  only  up  and  down  ; 
when  resting  on  the  paper  it  made  a  mark,  —  if  for  an  instant  only, 
a  dot ;  if  for  a  longer  time,  a  line.  When  lifted  from  the  paper,  it 
left  a  blank.  Here  were  three  elements,  —  dots,  lines,  and  spaces,  — 
which,  interwoven  with  intervals  of  time,  could  either  of  them  be 
repeated,  or  they  could  be  combined  variously  with  each  other,  to 
produce  groups  that  should  stand  for  letters. 

The  grandeur  of  this  wonderful  alphabet  of  dots,  lines,  and 
spaces,  has  not  been  fully  appreciated.  It  has  been  translated 
from  one  sense  to  another.     In  the  Morse  telegraph  it  may  be 


31 


used,  and  is  used,  by  the  sight,  the  touch,  the  taste,*  the  hearing, 
and  the  sense  of  feeling. 

Bain  succeeded  in  using  the  current  of  electricity  without  an  elec- 
tro-magnet, but  he  had  to  borrow  Morse's  alphabet.  Thompson's 
reflecting  galvanometer,  used  by  the  Atlantic  cable,  employs  the 
Morse  alphabet.  We  are  no  longer  surprised  when  we  find  that 
Steinheil,  at  the  head  of  German  telegraphy,  advised  the  abandon- 
ment of  his  own  most  ingenious  and  elaborate  apparatus,  and  the 
adoption  of  the  Morse  system  and  its  alphabet.  Nor  do  we  won- 
der at  its  general  adoption  throughout  the  world. 

The  conception  of  the  written  and  recorded  alphabet  and  the  mode 
of  printing,  all  concede  to  Morse  on  board  the  Sully.  This  concep- 
tion presupposes  the  use  of  the  electrical  current,  the  employment 
of  the  alternate  activity  and  repose  of  the  current,  and  an  apparatus 
for  breaking  and  closing  the  circuit  at  determined  intervals. 

INDEBTEDNESS    OP   MORSE    TO    OTHERS. 

The  indebtedness  of  Professor  Morse,  as  an  inventor,  to  others 
may  be  regarded  as  of  two  kinds,  There  were  the  results  of  scien- 
tific research  and  discovery  made  by  men  who  had  gone  before  him, 
and  with  which  he  was,  in  general  terms,  familiar.  Then  there  was 
the  co-operation  of  assistants  whom  he  took  into  his  confidence  and 
compensated  for  their  services.  Of  this  latter  class  were  the  ser- 
vices of  Dr.  Gale,  his  colleague  and  friend,  of  Mr.  Alfred  Vail,  and 
Professor  Fisher.  Of  the  former  there  was  Volta,  who  invented 
the  voltaic  pile,  GErsted,  Ampere  and  Arago,  Sturgeon  and  Dana. 
This  was  down  to  1827.  He  completed  the  plan  of  his  alphabet, 
his  mode  of  writing  and  printing,  and  committed  them  to  paper,  on 
board  the  Sully,  in  1832,  and  exhibited  a  working  model  of  his 
conception  in  action  in  1835  ;  and  a  model,  but  not  in  action,  of 

*  The  taste  is  occasionally  taken  advantage  of  where  accidents  occur  on  the 
line  of  railroads  and  telegraphs,  where  a  skilful  operator  happens  to  be  pres- 
ent. He  cuts  the  wire,  establishes  metallic  communication  with  the  earth,  and 
signals  by  uniting  and  separating  the  end  of  the  severed  wire  nearest  the  sta- 
tion, with  the  metallic  conductor  leading  to  the  earth.  He  receives  the  mes- 
sage in  answer  by  placing  his  tongue  between  the  two  metallic  points,  receiv- 
ing the  shocks  and  observing  the  intervals  between  them,  which  correspond 
with  those  produced  by  the  key  at  the  station. 


32 


the  relay  to  various  persons  in  1835  and  1836.  His  alphabet,  his 
new  mode  of  writing  and  printing,  were  clear-cut,  realized  concep- 
tions ;  but  to  perfect  the  apparatus  involved  resources,  which  he  had 
not.  There  were  no  shops  at  that  time  to  which  he  might  go  for 
the  ready  purchase  of  electro-magnets,  batteries,  insulated  wires? 
etc.  A  blacksmith  must  be  employed  to  bend  an  iron  rod'  to  the 
form  of  a  horseshoe,  and  the  wire  must  be  wound  by  hand.  Nor 
were  there  at  hand  facilities  for  repairs,  or  professors  accomplished 
and  ready  to  advise  in  the  science  scarcely  yet  developed  enough 
to  meet  the  wants  of  the  inventor.  There  was  not  a  constant  bat- 
tery. There  was,  indeed,  the  battery  of  many  pairs,  and  Sturgeon 
had  produced  his  electro-magnet  in  1825.  But  the  new  art  required 
an  inventor. 

The  substitution  by  Henry  of  the  concentric  multiplier  of 
Schweigger,  in  place  of  the  loose,  oblique  coil  of  Sturgeon,  reduced 
the  strength  of  the  battery  necessarily  required ;  and  the  employ- 
ment of  a  battery  of  many  pairs  in  place  of  a  single  pair  having 
the  same  surface,  which  projected  the  current  through  greater 
length  of  wire,  and  so  made  possible  the  magnetizing  of  iron  at  a 
distance,  revealed  the  direction  in  which  development  was  to  take 
place.  This  disclosed  a  principle  on  which  the  registering  appa- 
ratus could  be  worked  at  a  distance.  But  still  there  was  needed 
an  inventor. 

Not  one  of  all  the  brilliant  scientific  men  who  have  attached  their 
names  to  the  history  of  electro-magnetism  could  bring  the  means 
to  purchase  the  practical  registering  telegraph.  Some  of  them  had 
ascended  the  tower  that  looked  out  on  the  field  of  conquest.  Some 
of  them  brought  keener  vision  than  others.  Some  of  them  stood 
higher  than  others.  But  the  genius  of  invention  had  not  recognized 
them.  There  was  needed  an  inventor.  Now,  what  sort  of  a  want 
is  this  ? 

There  was  required  a  rare  combination  of  qualities  and  condi- 
tions. There  must  be  ingenuity  in  the  adaptation  of  available 
means  to  desired  ends  ;  there  must  be  the  genius  to  see  through 
non-essentials  to  the  fundamental  principle  on  which  success  de- 
pends ;  there  must  be  a  kind  of  skill  in  manipulation ;  great 
patience  and  pertinacity ;  a  certain  measure  of  culture ;  and 
the  inventor  of  a  recording  telegraph  must  be  capable  of  being 


33 

inspired  by  the  grandeur  of  the  thought  of  writing,  figura- 
tively speaking,  with  a  pen  a  thousand  miles  long,  — ■  with 
the  thought  of  a  postal  system  without  the  element  of  time. 
Moreover  the  person  who  is  to  be  the  inventor  must  be  free  from 
the  exactions  of  well-compensated,  every-day  absorbing  duties  — 
perhaps  he  must  have  had  the  final  baptism  of  poverty. 

Now  the  inventor  of  the  registering  telegraph  did  not  rise  from 
the  perusal  of  any  brilliant  paper  ;  he  happened  to  be  at  leisure  on 
ship-board,  ready  to  contribute  and  share  in  the  after-dinner  con- 
versation of  a  ship's  cabin,  when  the  occasion  arose. 

Morse's  electro-magnetic  telegraph  was  mainly  an  invention 
employing  power  and  agencies,  through  mechanical  devices,  to 
produce  a  given  end.  .  It  involved  the  combination  of  the  results 
of  the  labors  of  others  with  a  succession  of  special  contrivances  and 
some  discoveries  of  the  inventor  himself.  There  was  an  ideal  whole 
almost  at  the  outset,  but  involving  great  thought  and  labor  and 
patience  and  invention  to  produce  an  art  harmonious  in  its  organi- 
zation and  action. 

There  was  involved  what  he  did  not  find,  as  he  had  assumed. 
The  distance  through  which  any  effective  force  had  been  called 
into  play,  for  the  work  of  registration  was  as  an  established  fact 
altogether  inconsiderable.  It  was,  as  a  primary  fact,  to  be  ascer- 
tained in  order  to  the  development  of  the  electro-magnetic  record- 
ing telegraph,  whether  the  distance  between  the  battery  and  electro- 
magnet could  be  increased  beyond  the  narrow  limit  of  previous 
laboratory  experiment  to  a  distance  that  in  use  would  be  practical, 
and,  in  the  event  of  finding  the  force  becoming  feeble  with  in- 
creased distance,  to  discover  a  mode  of  reinforcing  the  current  at 
the  point  where  it  became  too  feeble  to  produce  printing  or  regis- 
tration, and  so  renewing  it  by  the  action  of  the  writer  at  the  pri- 
mary point  of  transmission,  thus  making  the  distance  sufficiently 
great  for  practical  needs. 

This  was  a  discovery  of  the  same  character  as  the  discovery  of 
the  use  of  the  intensity  battery.  It  involved  a  self-acting  device 
for  opening  and  closing  a  circuit.  It  required  that  the  armature 
in  the  first  circuit  should  play  through  a  narrow  and  adjustable 
interval,  near,  but  not  touching  the  face  of  the  magnet,  and  far 
enough  to  close  the  second  circuit,  without  getting '  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  action  of  the  magnet.     The  armature  must  also  have 


34 

an  adjustable  spring  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  imperfect  insulation 
or  enfeebled  action  of  the  battery.  This  discovery  of  a  mode  how 
to  reinforce  the  current  was  the  fruit  of  Morse's  thought  and  exper- 
iment. It  was  the  relay  which,  with  its  modifications  for  registering 
local  and  side-circuits,  was  the  crowning  feature  of  the  recording 
telegraph.     . 

The  discovery  that  the  voltaic  current  could  be  made  effective  in 
magnetizing  soft  iron,  and  produce  mechanical  effects  at  a  dis- 
tance of  ten  hundred  and  sixty  feet  was  made  by  Professor  Henry. 

Morse  found  that  the  force  diminished  with  increased  distance,  — 
a  point  doubtful  as  the  result  of  Professor  Henry's  experiments, — 
and  he  discovered  that  by  addition  of  successive  pairs  he  could 
gain  sufficient  force  to  produce  the  necessary  mechanical  effects  at 
ten  miles  in  1837,  and  at  a  distance  of  thirty-three  miles  in  1842. 
In  1843  he  carried  the  distance  up  to  one  hundred  and  sixty  miles, 
and  the  results  of  his  experiments  were  embodied  in  a  paper  by 
Dr.  John  W.  Draper,  in  the  September  number  of  Silliman's  Journal 
of  that  year. 

There  has  arisen  a  notion  that  in  the  distribution  of  honors  Pro- 
fessor Morse  has  received  credit  for  some  discoveries  that  was 
properly  due  to  others.  The  almost  universal  adoption  of  the 
Morse  system,  as  a  consequence  of  its  wonderful  simplicity,  rapid- 
ity of  action,  and  perfectness,  has  led  the  great  public  to  feel  less 
interest  in  the  tributary  details  of  what  others  have  done,  than  in 
the  brilliant  result  with  which  the  name  of  Morse  is  forever  com- 
bined. The  great  public  is  liable  to  overlook  the  individual  dis- 
coveries, which,  brought  to  light  from  time  to  time,  ministered  to 
the  wants  of  civilization  but  little  by  themselves,  to  the  work  of 
him  who  combined  the  discoveries  of  others  with  his  own  and  his 
inventions  to  make  them  all  useful.      • 

That  strict  justice  will  be  done,  though  it  wait  long,  we  must 
believe.  None  have  suffered  more  in  the  absence  of  its  awai'ds, 
in  times  gone  by,  than  Professor  Morse.  Now  there  is  fear  that 
others  will  get  less  than  is  their  due. 

In  Europe,  the  friends  of  Professor  Wheatstone  feel  aggrieved. 
But  they  need  not.  The  inventions  with  which  bis  name  is  con- 
nected are  quite  independent,  very  brilliant,  and  useful.  In  sim- 
plicity they  are  inferior  to  Morse's.  In  type  they  are  semaphores, 
not  telegraphs.      They  are  the  results  of  study  in  the  direction  of 


35 

Ampere  and  Schilling  —  needle  instruments.  The  latter  in  the  di- 
rection of  Steinheil,  are  magneto-electric  instruments.  The  count- 
ing-house magneto-electric  apparatus,  working  with  an  alphabet 
and  wand,  has  advantages  not  exceeded  by  any  apparatus  3'et 
devised.     Anybody  can  use  it  with  but  little  practice. 

In  our  own  country  there  has  arisen  a  conviction  that  to  Profes- 
sor Henry  there  has  been  awarded  a  less  credit,  both  in  the  old 
world  and  at  home,  than  is  justly  his  due. 

This  has  come  partly  from  the  circumstance  that  of  his  vast 
number  of  researches  but  few  have  seen  the  light.  They  await  a 
leisure,  which  the  absorbing  nature  of  his  every-day  duties  is  con- 
tinually putting  farther  away.  It  is  in  part  due  to  accident,  which 
is  greatly  to  be  deplored,  however  it  may  admit  of  explanation. 

It  was  the  serious  conviction  of  Professor  Morse,  in  the  later 
years  of  his  life,  that  he  was  not  indebted  to  Professor  Henry 
either  directly  through  personal  interview  or  by  correspondence, 
or  indirectly  through  others,  for  any  scientific  discovery  in  his  in- 
vention of  the  recording  telegraph.  That  he  was  unconscious  of  any 
such  indebtedness  there  cannot  be  a  doubt.  That  he  realty  was, 
nevertheless,  indebted  to  him  indirectly  through  others,  I  think, 
appears  from  a  careful  examination  of  the  facts. 

It  is  clear  that  Professor  Henry  was  the  first  to  apply  Schweig- 
ger's  insulated  multiplier  to  the  electro-magnet  — 1828-29.  It  is 
clear  that  Professor  Henry  was  the  first  to  render  such  a  magnet 
effective  through  a  battery  of  many  pairs  at  a  distance.  The  re- 
cording telegraph  of  Professor  Morse  rests  on  principles  which 
these  determinations  were  the  first  to  illustrate.  These  experi- 
ments were  first  published  in  January,  1831.  The  invention  on 
board  the  Sully  was  in  October,  1832. 

The  dates  of  these  events  are  such  as  to  place  the  labors  of  Pro- 
fessor Henry  in  the  position  of  priority  in  point  of  time. 

The  invention  of  Professor  Morse,  in  1832,  proceeded  on  the  as- 
sumption that  the  velocity  of  the  electric  current  was  infinitely 
great,  and  that  the  voltaic  current  could  be  made  to  magnetize  soft 
iron  at  great  but  undefined  distances.  He  was  chiefly  occupied, 
at  the  outset,  with  the  invention  of  the  alphabet,  and  the  means 
for  writing  and  printing.     The  chief  expenditure  of  power  in  writ- 


36 


ing  was  the  intelligent  human  hand.  The  chief  expenditure  of 
power  in  printing  was  to  be  in  a  falling  weight,  connected  with 
clock-work,  and  this  weight  could  be  wound  up.  He  had  assumed, 
what  was  really  true,  as  the  event  proved,  that  the  electro-magnet 
could  be  made  to  do  the  rest,  according  to  his  conception.  "With  the 
production  and  arrangement  of  the  devices  connected  with  the  writ- 
ing and  printing,  he  was  occupied  at  intervals  between  1832  and 
1835,  in  which  latter  year  he  had  completed  a  working  apparatus  on 
a'  scale  adapted  to  his  slender  means.  He  had  now,  in  substance, 
the  whole  operating  telegraph,  with  the  exception  of  a  proper 
length  of  wire  for  testing  the  question  whether  the  force  could  be 
projected  sufficiently  far  to  make  the  invention  practical;  that  is, 
inexpensive  enough  to  be  successfully  introduced  to  public  use. 
He  was  working  with  a  single  pair,  —  his  Cruikshanks  battery 
being  out  of  repair.  At  this  time,  early  in  1836,  Dr.  Gale  was 
confidentially  invited  to  see  the  invention.  It  was,  it  should  be 
remembered,  in  actual  working  condition,  —  as  an  invention  con- 
taining all  that  was  essential  to  its  demonstrative  operation.  From 
this  period  to  the  early  spring  of  1837,  circumstances  prevented 
Professor  Morse  from  going  on  with  his  invention. 

With  the  recollection  of  the  apparatus  working  with  a  single 
pair,  through  a  comparatively  short  circuit  and. a  Sturgeon  magnet, 
in  the  year  previous,  it  was  natural  that  Dr.  Gale,  on  again  seeing 
the  apparatus,  in  1837,  should  desire  to  see  it  operated  with  a  more 
powerful  battery,  a  wire  of  greater  length,  and  a  magnet  of  numer- 
ous coils.  Professor  Morse  had  (Dr.  Gale  says  in  his  deposition) 
"  always  expressed  his  confidence  of  success  in  propagating  mag- 
netic power  through  any  distance  of  electric  conductors  which  cir- 
cumstances might  render  desirable."  Dr.  Gale  would  like  to  see 
the  question  tested,  and  proffered  the  necessary  cups  and  wire  from 
his  own  laboratory  for  the  experiment.  The  result  was  precisely 
what  Professor  Morse  had  anticipated,  —  had  scarcely  doubted. 

Dr.  Gale,  in  giving  an  account  of  this  experiment  in  a  letter  to 
Professor  Henry,  dated  April  7,  1856,  and  published  in  the  Re- 
port of  a  committee  of  the  Regents  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution 
for  1857,  says  :  — 

.  .  ,  "  The  sparseness  of  the  wires  in  the  magnet  coils,  and 
the  ase  of  the  single  cup  battery  were  to  me,  on  the  first  look  of 


37 

the  instrument,  obvious  marks  of  defect,  and  I  accordingly  sug- 
gested to  the  professor,  without  giving  my  reasons  for  so  doing,  that 
a  batteiy  of  many  pairs  should  be  substituted  for  that  of  a  single 
pair,  and  that  the  coil  on  each  arm  of  the  magnet  should  be  in- 
creased to  many  hundred  turns  each  ;"  .  .  .  "  although  I  gave 
no  reasons  at  the  time  for  the  suggestion  I  had  proposed,  in  modify- 
ing the  arrangement  of  the  machine,  I  did  so  afterwards,  and  re- 
ferred, in  my  explanations,  to  the  paper  of  Professor  Hemx 

■  It  is  obvious  that  Dr.  Gale  was  enabled  to  make  the  s^^0.PP 
he  did,  and  give  the  co-operation  he  did,  in  regard  to greate'i'  length  .- ,_ 
of  wire,  and  multiplied  pairs,  and  multiplied  insulated-coils,- largely 
through  his  acquaintance  with  the  researches  of  Professor  Henry. 

Now,  in  this  connection  it  should  be  remembered  lhat  thei^Fp!  ; 
numerous  coils  around  the  electro-magnet,  made  by^lxii  as  earl^^p 
as  1831,  had  been  mentioned  by  Dr.  Jackson  in  the  first, con yeipsa-*! 
tion  at  the  dinner-table  on  the  Sully,  and  Professor  $•&&&*  4^^f^ 
it,  in  his  letter  to  Dr.  Jackson  of  November,  1837,  two  yearirtiejore 
any  communication  had  been  held  with  Professor  Henry  ;  and  in  the 
same  conversation,  the  transmission  of  a  current  (the  identity  of 
the  two  —  the  electric  and  the  galvanic  —  seems  to  have  been  as- 
sumed, possibly  in  view  of  Faraday's  discovery  of  the  drawing  of 
a  spark  from  a  magnet),  without  appreciable  loss  of  energy,  four 
hundred  times  around  the  lecture-room  of  the'Sorbonne, —  say  from 
twenty  to  thirty  miles,  —  was  mentioned  by  Dr.  Jackson,  in  the 
same  conversation,  and  this,  too,  Professor  Morse  recalls  in  the 
same  letter. 

In  a  recent  letter  from  Dr.  Gale  to  the  speaker,  he  says  :  "  But 
Morse,  not  having  been  accustomed  to  investigate  scientific  facts, 
could  not  appreciate  the  investigations  of  Henry  as  applicable  to 
the  telegraph,  and  I  presume  that  Morse  never  did  fully  appreciate 
the  benefit  which  his  machine  derived  from  Henry's  discovery." 

THE   RELAY. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  upon  the  question  of  who  was 
the  inventor  of  the  relay.  It  has  been  claimed  for  Schilling,  for 
Cooke,  for  Wheatstone,  for  Henry  and  for  Davy,  by  those  who  have 

*  See  Appendix  A. 


38 

not  carefully  considered  the  question,  or  who  are  reluctant  to  ac- 
knowledge the  claim  of  Professor  Morse.  The  significance  of  this 
feature  in  the  Morse  system  will  justify  a  full  consideration  of  the 
subject. 

Much  of  the  obscurity  rests  upon  an  imperfect  appreciation  of 
what  the  relay  is  ;  some  of  it  upon  the  dates  of  patents  for  special 
applications  of  the  principle  ;  a  smaller  fraction  still  on  the  differ- 
ence of  dates  at  which  the  invention  was  exhibited  to  the  public 
or  brought  into  actual  service  ;    not  a  little  of  it  on  national  pride. 

To  those  who  conceive  that  it  consists  in  the  production  of  a 
special  mechanical  effect,  the  effect  being  the  opening  of  one  cir- 
cuit by  the  closing  of  another,  will  find  the  invention  in  the  ex- 
periment of  Professor  Henry  at  Princeton,  where  he  early,  and  I 
think  first  of  any,  employed  an  electro-magnet  to  break  the  cir- 
cuit of  a  quantity  battery  which  through  its  electro-magnet  was 
holding  a  great  weight.* 

But  this  is  not  the  relay.  Even  if  there  had  existed  a  device  for 
restoring  the  circuit  and  again  lifting  the  armature  and  its  weight 
it  would  not  have  been  a  relay,  for  it  would  have  brought  into  play 
only  a  quantity  battery,  which  as  a  relay  for  reinforcing  the  current 
was  worthless.  But  there  was  no  such  device  and  no  length  of 
wire  beyond  the  connection  through  which  as  a  relay  the  battery 
could  have  acted.  The  physical  experiment,  as  such,  had  a  some- 
what nearer  relation  to  a  local  circuit  for  registration. 

Piofessor  Henry,  in  his  letter  to  the  Board  of  Eegents,  of  the 
Smithsonian,  March  16,  1857,  Ann.  Rep.  1857,  p.  87,  with  the 
magnanimity  which  belongs  to  his  nature,  disclaims  this  construc- 
tion of  his  scientific  researches.  He  says  :  "  My  testimony  tended 
to  establish  the  fact  that,  though  not  entitled  to  the  exclusive  use 
of  the  electro-magnet  for  telegraphic  purposes,  he  was  entitled  to 
his  particular  machine,  register,  alphabet,  etc."  The  registering 
device  is  the  identical  device  of  the  relay,  except  that  it  is  applied 
to  a  different  purpose.     Of  the  necessity  of  the  relay  as  a  means 


*  Professor  Henry  opened  the  circuit  of  a  large  quantity  magnet  at  Prince- 
ton, when  loaded  with  several  hundred  pounds,  by  attracting  upwards  a  small 
movable  wire,  by  means  of  a  small .  intensity  magnet,  connected  with  a  long 
wire  circuit  and  an  intensity  battery. 


39 

to  be  ascertained  to  make  transmissions  through  great  distances 
possible,  Prof.  Henry  had  spoken  in  his  letter  of  May  6,  1839  (see 
Appendix  A).     He  had  evidently  np  to  that  time  not  heard  of  it. 

The  relay  is  a  discovery  as  well  as  a  device  or  a  series  of  devices 
or  inventions.  It  had  its  birth  in  the  effort  to  answer  the  question,  — 
How  can  the  current,  which  has  become  feeble  through  distance 
from  the  battery,  be  reinforced?  There  was  need  of  some  principle 
akin  to  that  which  supplies  a  locomotive  and  train  with  fuel, 
water,  and  oil,  without  stopping.  The  stopping  consumes  time. 
To  be  obliged  to  repeat  the  message  every  few  miles  would  be  to 
abandon  it.  It  would  be  expensive  as  well  as  time-consuming. 
Now  the  reinforcement  of  the  current  at  a  distance  from  the  prime 
station  through  the  very  instrumentality  of  the  message  sent  is 
an  absolute  new  departure.  It  is  a  grand  idea,  primarily,  and 
secondarily  it  involves  inventions  of  mechanical  devices  to  effect 
several  things.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  wanted  an  electro-mag- 
net at  the  second  station,  operated  through  the  battery  at  the  pri- 
mary station.  This  magnet  must  draw  its  armature  not  to  the 
face  of  the  magnet,  but  only  very  near  it,  and  in  so  doing  close 
the  second  circuit.  This  takes  place  with  the  closing  of  the  first 
circuit.  In  opening  the  first  circuit,  the  second  circuit  is  opened  at 
the  same  instant,  and  the  magnet  at  the  second  station  with  the 
.  arrest  of  the  current  loses  its  magnetism.  Now  a  self-acting,  ad- 
justable spring  draws  the  armature  away  from  the  face  of  the  mag- 
net, through  a  space  very  narrow,  but  adequate  to  break  the  cir- 
cuit at  the  second  station. 

Here  are  the  fewest  elements  of  the  relay.  It  involves  the  open- 
ing and  closing  of  the  circuit,  by  an  act  going  out  from  the  pri- 
mary station.  Of  these  in  Professor  Henry's  experiment  there  was 
the  opening  only.  The  relay  opens  and  closes  in  connection  with 
a  conductor  of  an  intensity  battery,  operating  through  a  long  con- 
ductor upon  a  distant  magnet.  Neither  of  these  was  in  the  ex- 
periment at  Princeton. 

Dr.  Gale  testifies  in  the  suit  of  O'Reilly  et  al.  vs.  Morse  et  al., 
among  other  things,  as  follows  :  "  That  in  the  month  of  January, 
in  the  year  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  thirty-six,  I  was  a 
colleague  professor  in  the  University  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
with  Prof.  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  who  had  rooms  in  the  University 


40 

building  on  Washington  square,  in  said  city.  That  during  the  said 
month  of  January,  of  the  year  aforesaid,  the  said  Professor  Morse 
invited  me  into  his  private  room  in  the  said  University,  where  I 
saw  for  the  first  time  certain  apparatus  constituting  his  electro- 
magnetic telegraph." 

Here  follows  a  description  of  the  apparatus,  and,  in  reply  to 
cross-questioning,  he  says  that  the  apparatus  was  in  perfect  and 
working  order  when  he  saw  it  (in  1836).  (Letters  from  Commo- 
dore Shubrick,  President  Tappan,  Robert  Rankin,  and  others,  are 
printed  by  Professor  Morse,  fixing  the  date  of  the  exhibition  to 
them  as  early  as  1835.  The  testimony  of  Huntington  and  Olm- 
stead,  pupils  in  art  to  Professor  Morse  in  1835  and  1836,  and  not 
thereafter,  upon  the  whole  apparatus,  including  the  combined 
series  (relay),  is  conclusive  upon  the  same  point.) 

Dr.  Gale  says,  in  his  deposition  :  "It  was  early  a  question  be- 
tween Professor  Morse  and  myself,  Where  was  the  limit  of  the 
magnetic  power  to  move  a  lever?  I  expressed  a  doubt  whether  a 
lever  could  be  moved  by  this  power  at  a  distance  of  twenty  miles ; 
and  my  settled  conviction  was,  that  it  could  not  be  done  with  suffi- 
cient force  to  mark  paper  at  one  hundred  miles'  distance.  To 
this  Professor  Morse  was  accustomed  to  reply,  '  If  I  can  suc- 
ceed in  working  a  magnet  ten  miles,  I  can  go  round  the  globe.' 
The  chief  anxiety  at  this  stage  of  the  invention  was  to  ascertain 
the  utmost  limit  of  distance  at  which  he  (Morse)  could  work  or 
move  a  lever  by  magnetic  power.  He  often  said  to  me,  '  It  mat- 
ters not  how  delicate  the  movement  may  be ;  if  I  can  obtain  it  at 
all,  it  is  all  I  want.'  Professor  Morse  often  referred  to  the  num- 
ber of  stations  which  might  be  required,  and  which,  he  observed, 
would  add  to  the  complications  and  expense.  The  said  Morse 
always  expressed  his  confidence  of  success  in  propagating  mag- 
netic power  through  any  distance  of  electric  conductors  which  cir- 
cumstances might  render  desirable.  His  plan  was  thus  often 
explained  to  me  :  '  Suppose,'  said  Professor  Morse,  '  that  in  ex- 
perimenting on  twenty  miles  of  wire,  we  should  find  that  the  power 
of  magnetism  is  so  feeble  that  it  will  but  move  a  lever,  with  cer- 
tainty a  hair's  breadth ;  that  would  be  insufficient,  it  may  be,  to 
write  or  print ;  yet  it  would  be  sufficient  to  close  and  break  another 
or  a  second  circuit  twenty  miles  further,  and  this  second  circuit 


41 


could  be  made,  in  the  same  manner,  to  break  and  close  a  third  cir- 
cuit twenty  miles  further ;  and  so  on  around  the  globe.' 

"  This  general  statement  of  the  means  to  be  resorted  to  now  em- 
braced in  what  is  called  the  '  receiving  magnet,'  to  render  practical 
writing  or  printing  by  telegraph,  through  long  distances,  was  shown 
to  me  more  in  detail  early  in  the  spring  of  the  year  1837  (one  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  and  thirty-seven)."  It  is  to  be  observed,  there- 
fore, that  he  —  Dr.  Gale  —  had  not  tested  it,  or  seen  it  tested  before, 
and  all  this  is  in  keeping  with  the  letter  of  Professor  Henry  to  Pro- 
fessor Morse,  of  date  May  6, 1839.  He  was  replying  to  the  inquiry, 
'  Have  you  met  with  any  fact,  in  your  experiments  thus  far,  that 
would  lead  you  to  think  that  my  mode  of  telegraphic  communica- 
tion will  prove  impracticable  ? '  and  writes,  — '  I  can  say,  however, 
that  so  far  as  I  am  acquainted  with  the  minutiae  of  your  plan,  I  see  no 
practical  difficulty  in  the  way  of  its  application  for  comparatively 
short  distances;  but  if  the  length  of  the  wire  between  the  stations 
be  great,  I  think  that  some  other  modification  will  be  found  neces  - 
sary  in  order  to  develop  a  sufficient  power  at  the  farther  end  of 
the  line.' " 

At  this  stage,  1839,  two  years  after  the  caveat  and  one  year  after 
the  application  for  a  patent  covering  the  relay  had  been  passed 
upon,  it  is  obvious  that  Professor  Henry  was  not  aware  of  this 
feature  of  Professor  Morse's  plan,  —  the  relay.  He  could  not  have 
suggested  it ;  nor  could  it  have  already  occurred  to  him.  The 
finding  out  of  the  required  modification  was  a  discovery,  and  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  all  in  electro-magnetism  applied 
to  electric  telegraphy  that  have  at  any  time  been  made. 

Davy's  apparatus,  Cooke's  and  Wheatstone's  so-called  relays, 
were  not  relays  at  all.  They  were  devices  for  alarms,  — for  calls. 
Devices  for  this  object  are  as  old  as  Soemmering,  in  1811.  Henry's 
bell-ringer  at  Albany,  before  1832  (Professor  Hall's  letter),  was  of 
this  class.  But  let  us  look  at  the  dates.  Cooke  was  a  student  at 
Heidelberg  in  1836,  when  he  was  invited  by  an  acquaintance  to 
visit  (March  6)  Professor  Moncke's  rooms,  where  he  had  in  opera- 
tion a  rude  Schilling  telegraph.  This  device  he  reproduced  partly 
in  Heidelberg  and  partly  in  Frankfort  on  the  Maine,  and  has- 
tened to  England,  where  he  spoke  of  it  as  "Moncke's  telegraph,"  or 
the  "  Heidelberg  telegraph."     He  greatly  modified  it,  and  planned 


42 


an  alarm  in  the  year  1836,  which  was  to  release  a  detent  and  set 
in  motion  clock-work  to  ring  a  bell.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  had 
no  connection  with  the  idea  of  a  relay,  a  device  for  renewing  the 
strength  of  an  expiring  current.  The  device  of  Cooke  was  simply  a 
contrivance  to  wake  up  an  office  clerk,  or  call  him  to  duty.  The 
devices  of  the  Morse  relay  contemplated  the  indefinite  extension  of 
the  length  of  wire  through  which  messages  could  be  sent.  It*con- 
templated  dispensing  with  the  necessity  of  calling  clerks  at  inter- 
mediate stations  to  duty,  and  even  of  dispensing  in  great  propor- 
tion with  the  services  of  many  officers  altogether.  Huntington  and 
Olmstead  testify  to  having  seen  it  in  1835. 

I  s  houlcl  not  have  dwelt  upon  this  subject  at  such  length  had  I 
not  seen,  in  a  recent  American  text-book  on  chemical  forces,  that 
the  author,  somewhat  doubtfully  it  is  true,  ascribes  the  relay  to  a 
source  which  never  claimed  it,  but  has  distinctly  disclaimed  it.  It 
is  a  mistake  to  refer  the  relay,  conception  and  execution,  to  any 
other  source  than  Professor  Morse.  The  credit  to  Morse  is  given 
without  hesitation  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  —  among  the  rest 
by  De  la  Rive  and  Steinheil,  than  whom  there  are  no  higher  au- 
thorities. 

THE   USE   OF   WIRE    ON   POSTS,    OR   AIR-LINE   CONDUCTORS. 

The  use  of  wire  sustained  on  posts  for  conducting  frictional  elec- 
tricity through  the  air  goes  back  at  least  to  Franklin's  experiment 
across  the  Schuylkill.  Watson,  in  1847,  laid  his  wire  on  the  ground. 
For  the  voltaic  current,  it  was  plainly  first  used  by  Soemmering, 
in  1809.  It  had  first,  seven  hundred  and  twentj'-four  feet ;  two 
days  later,  one  thousand  feet ;  and  ten  days  later,  two  thousand 
feet.  Such  lengths  he  did  not  need  to  bury  for  the  experiments 
he  made.  He  eventually  used  ten  thousand  feet,  and  settled 
conclusively  points  long  after  re-discovered,  such  as  the  projection 
of  the  effective  current  from  an  intensity  battery  to  great  distances. 
Air-line  conductors  must  have  been  next  used  by  Baron  Schilling  in 
his  experiments,  through  many  miles  on  his  estate,  between  1820 
and  1832.  It  was  used,  according  to  Gould's  statement,  by  Gauss 
and  Weber,  in  1833-34,  and  by  Steinheil  in  1837.  The  use  of 
posts  was  covered  by  Morse  (unconscious  of  what  had  been  done 
before  him)  in  his  caveat  of  1837. 


43 


Some  of  the  friends  of  Professor  Henry  have  the  impression  that 
he  made  the  first  suggestion  to  Professor  Morse  about  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  conducting  wire  on  posts  in  the  air.  This  is  a  mistake . 
The  literature  of  the  case  shows  that  the  letters  which  passed  be- 
tween the  two  gentlemen  do  not  contain  the  suggestion.  Their 
first  personal  interview  was  in  1839.  In  Morse's  letter  to  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  dated  September  27,  1837,  he  says, 
speaking  of  the  cost  of  the  construction  of  a  working  telegraph  : 
"  Iron  tubes  inclosing  the  wires,  and  filled  in  with  pitch  and  resin, 
would  probably  be  the  most  eligible  mode  of  securing  the  conduc- 
tors from  injury,  while  at  the  same  time  it  would  be  the  most 
costly.  .  .  .  Iron  tubes  of  one  and  one-half  inches  in  diame- 
ter, I  learn,  can  be  obtained  at  Baltimore  at  twenty-eight  cents  per 
foot.  The  trenching  will  not  be  more  than  three  cents  for  two  feet, 
or  about  seventy-five  dollars  a  mile.  ...  If  the  current  is  laid 
through  the  air,  the  first  cost  will  doubtless  be  much  lessened. 
.  .  .  Stout  spars  of  some  thirty  feet  in  height,  well  planted  in 
the  ground,  and  placed  about  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet  apart, 
would  in  this  case  be  required,  along  the  tops  of  which  the  circuit 
might  be  stretched."  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  plan.was  orig- 
inal with  Professor  Morse,  although,  to  him  unknown,  Sfceinheil 
used  the  posts  and  elevated  wire  in  the  same  year,  and  in  the  next 
year  published  an  account  of  it. 

USING   THE    EARTH   AS   PART    OF   THE   CIRCUIT. 

In  the  experiments  of  Watson  and  Franklin  with  frictional 
electricity,  the  earth  was  used,  as  we  have  seen,  as  a  part  of  the 
circuit. 

Steinheil  was  the  first  to  use  it  as  part  of  the  circuit  of  the  vol- 
taic current  in  1837  ;  Morse  adopted  it  in  1845. 

THE    STOPPING   APPARATUS. 

This  ingenious  device  for  starting  the  fillet  of  paper  at  the  in- 
stant the  message  begins  to  be  received,  independently  of  the  atten- 
tion or  presence  of  the  office  clerk,  and  stopping  it,  as  soon  as  the 
message  has  been  received,  so  as  to  prevent  waste,  was  invented  by 
Professor  Morse,  in  1837,  and  fully  described  by  Alfred  Vail  in  his 


44 


work  on  Telegraphy,  in  1845.  The  instrument  was  patented  in 
France  in  1838,  and  in  this  country  in  1846.  It  was  improved 
upon. by  Sortais  in  1861  or  1862,  and  invented  anew  by  Professor 
Wheatstone  in  1863.  The  invention  of  the  latter  is  spoken  of  in 
a  contemporary  public  print,  as  follows:  "A  merchant  can  now 
lock  up  his  counting-house,  and  on  his  return  find  every  message 
faithfully  recorded  in  legible  type,  during  his  absence,  by  this 
beautiful  little  machine." 

The  report  of  the  Committee  on  Commerce  of  the  House  of  Eep- 
resentatives,  December  30,  1842,  announced  as  follows,  in  giving 
the  superior  advantages  of  Professor  Morse's  invention:  "Pos- 
sessing an  advantage  over  electric  telegraphs  heretofore  in  use, 
inasmuch  as  it  records,  in  permanently  legible  characters  on  paper, 
any  communication  which  may  be  made  by  it,  without  the  aid  of 
any  agent  at  the  place  of  recording,  except  the  apparatus,  which  is 
put  in  motion  at  the  point  of  communication.  Thus  the  recording 
apparatus,  called  the  register,  may  be  left  in  a  closed  chamber,  where 
it  will  give  notice  of  its  commencing  to  write  by  a  bell,  and  the  commu- 
nication may  be  found  on  opening  the  apartment.'" 

In  the  course  of  the  protracted  litigations  to  which  Professor 
Morse  has  been  subjected  in  defence  of  his  rights,  every  source  of 
testimony  has  been  exhausted  to  shake,  if  possible,  his  claims  to 
originality  and  priority.  Scientific  experts  and  rival  claimants 
have  been  marshalled,  on  repeated  occasions,  to  sustain  the  assault 
by  every  means  in  their  power.  The  effort  could  not  well  have 
been  stronger.  It  has  on  every  occasion  been  overwhelmingly  de- 
feated. 

The  decisions  of  the  highest  tribunals  in  the  country,  —  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States  and  the  Patent  Office,  —  which 
have  been  rendered  in  these  cases,  are  so  clear,  emphatic  and 
convincing,  that  they  must  forever  be  accepted  as  determining 
affirmatively  all  the  questions  bearing  on  Professor  Morse's  claims 
that  can  fall  to  courts  weighing  human  testimony.* 

In  our  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  recording  telegraph  we  were 
brought  down  to  the  period  of  the  successful  working  of  the  Morse 
apparatus  between  Baltimore  and  Washington  in  1844. 


See  Appendix  C. 


45 


The  public  journals  of  that  time  and  of  recent  date  have  made 
us  familiar  with  the  details,  —  the  jeers,  the  buffetings,  the  strug- 
gle, the  self-sacrifice  which  attended  the  effort  to  procure  the  ap- 
propriation by  Congress  of  the  money  necessary  to  construct  the 
first  experimental  line.  It  is  not  in  my  province  on  this  occasion 
to  dwell  upon  them,  nor  upon  the  plaudits  and  honors  and  fortune 
that  came  at  last  to  crown  the  noble  life  which  has  so  recently 
closed. 

I  will  occupy  but  a  moment  further  in  stating,  in  a  word,  what  I 
conceive  to  be  the  just  claims  of  Professor  Morse  as  the  inventor 
of  the  electro-magnetic  recording  telegraph. 

WHAT   WAS   HIS    OWN? 

1st.  The  conception  of  registration.  This  underlaid  the  idea  of 
an  alphabet.  It  involved  the  fillet  of  paper  moving  by  clock- 
work with  uniform  velocity  under  the  lever  pen,  rising  and  fall- 
ing at  measured  intervals,  controlled  by  the  transmitting  key 
operating  the  electro-magnet  through  the  opening  and  closing  of 
the  galvanic  circuit.  It  included  the  mathematical  and  mechan- 
ical conception  of  the  combinations  of  dots,  lines,  and  spaces,  to 
stand  for  letters,  whether  recorded  chemically  or  by  pressure. 

2d.  The  combined  series,  or  relay,  which  made  it  practical  to 
transmit  from  any  station  intelligence  to  any  point,  however  "far, 
and  to  receive  and  record  messages  at  the  end,  and  at  all  interme- 
diate points,  however  numerous. 

3d.  The  first  practical  determination  that  the  galvanic  force 
could  be  made  practically  operative  through  sufficiently  great  dis- 
tances without  repetition,  to  render  the  recording  telegraph  a  prac- 
tical success,  suited  to  public  use. 

4th.  The  electro-magnetic  sounder,  or  acoustic  semaphore,  with 
an  alphabet  corresponding  to  dots,  lines  and  spaces. 

5th.  The  stopping  apparatus,  for  controlling  the  movement  of 
the  fillet  of  paper  at  a  distant  station  through  the  key  of  the  trans- 
mitting office.* 

*  Professor  Morse  suggested  to  Arago,  in  1839,  the  use  of  the  electro-mag- 
netic recording  telegraph  for  determinations  of  longitude.  He  seems  to  have 
been  the  first  to  lay  a  working  submarine  cable. 


46 

6th.  The  combination  of  the  battery  of  Volta,  improved  by  Dan- 
iell ;  the  electro-magnet  of  Sturgeon  ;  the  multiplied  insulated  coil, 
and  the  battery  of  many  pairs  and  long-conducting  wire  of  Henry  ; 
and  the  single  wire  and  earth  circuit  of  Steinheil,  —  with  his  own 
writing  and  registering  apparatus,  including  the  key,  lever-pen, 
moving  fillet  of  paper,  stopping  apparatus,  and  register-magnet ; 
his  own  alphabet  of  dots,  lines  and  spaces,  and  his  own  relay 
working  with  an  intensity  battery,  —  all  proportioned  and  adjusted 
in  a  harmonious  whole  of  extreme  simplicity,  and  adapted  to  prac- 
tical working  for  every-day  public  use. 

7th.  He  is  entitled  to  the  further  honor  of  having  fought  and 
conquered  the  difficulties,  scientific,  pecuniary,  material,  and  in 
the  way  of  legislation  and  litigation,  which  the  effort  to  make  the 
invention  useful  and  successful  encountered.  The  strength  and 
faith  and  patience  and  courage  with  which  he  pursued  his  inven- 
tion to  its  completion  are  the  attributes  which  men  honor. 

If  we  do  not  credit  to  Professor  Morse  individual  discoveries  in 
electro-magnetism,  which  he  never  claimed,  we  ascribe  to  him  the 
greater  honor  of  having  cast  previous  discoveries  into  the  alembic 
of  his  own  mind,  and  evolved  the  first  practical  registering  tele- 
graph, and  so  made  those  discoveries  by  fusion  with  his  own  dis- 
coveries and  inventions  subservient  to  the  highest  interests  of 
civilization. 


REMARKS    OF   MR.    DANA. 

The  Mayor  next  introduced  the  Hon.  R.  H.  Dana,  Jr.,  who 
said :  — 

Mr.  Mayor,  —  Ladies  and  Gentlemen :  —  After  such  an  event 
as  the  announcement  of  these  dispatches  from  all  parts  of  the 
world,  any  attempt  to  impress  upon  our  own  minds  the  value  of 
this  invention  seems  to  me  to  be  superfluous.  Can  we  make  it 
real  to  ourselves  that  China  and  Egypt  are  conversing  with  Bos- 
ton and  "Washington,  and  expressing  their  sympathy  in  the  loss 
and  their  admiration  of  the  character  of  this  great  discoverer? 
Why,  a  few  years  ago,  Mr.  Mayor,  when  I  went  to  China  and  to 
Japan,  they  seemed  to  me  to  be  places  very  far  off.  I  thought  I 
never  should  get  to  Japan,  and  when  I  got  there  I  didn't  know 
that  I  should  ever  get  away.  But  now  the  Japanese  ambassadors 
in  Washington  converse  with  their  government  daily,  by  the  won- 
derful invention  of  that  man  whom  we  are  called  together  to  honor 
to-night. 

I  should  like,  Mr.  Mayor,  to  have  your  permission  —  I  should 
be  proud  to  be  the  organ  of  this  assembly —  to  convey  to  Professor 
Horsford  our  united  thanks  for  the  lucid,  just  and  interesting 
statement  he  has  made  of  the  nature  and  history  of  Mr.  Morse's 
invention.  I  am  sure  I  have  the  approval  of  you  all  when  I  ven- 
ture to  tender  him,  in  your  name,  our  united  thanks  and  congratu- 
lations. [This  proposal  of  Mr.  Dana  was  responded  to  by  hearty 
applause  from  the  audience.] 

It  is  an  honored  custom  of  Boston,  Mr.  Mayor,  that  the  chief 
magistrate  of  our  city  should  call  together  the  citizens  whenever 
any  great  event  has  occurred  in  which  we  are  all  interested.  Es- 
pecially has  it  been  our  custom  to  assemble  in  this  hall  to  mingle 
our  sympathies  and  express  our  regrets  when  the  community  is 
deprived  by  death  of  the  services  of  an  illustrious  citizen.  '  There 
are  some  I  see  here  upon  this  platform,  who  can  remember  when 
Eaneuil  Hall  was  filled  to  commemorate  the  death  of  the  elder 
Adams.  There  are  more  who  can  remember  when  Faneuil  Hall 
was  again  filled  to  hear  the  eloquent  notes  of  Everett  on  the  death 
of  the  younger  Adams,  and  again  of  Lafayette  ;  and,  sir,  yester- 


48 

day  those  flags,  drooping  from  balf-mast,  mourning  the  untimely 
fate  of  him  who  had  upheld  them  and  the  republic  of  which 
they  were  the  symbols,  in  the  darkest  hours,  — remind  us,  sir,  of 
the  days  when  this  hall  wore  the  emblems  of  mourning  for  the 
death  of  our  great  chief  magistrate,  patriot,  and  martyr.  As  we 
are  looking  about  this  hall,  at  these  pictures  upon  its  walls,  we 
are  reminded  that  it  is  mainly  to  the  heroes  and  patriots  and  sages 
and  statesmen  of  the  land  that  the  honors  of  these  occasions  have 
been  given.  But,  sir,  I  am  sure  you  will  say  — I  am  sure  that  all 
present  will  agree  —  that  we  are  met  to-night  on  an  occasion  worthy 
of  this  place,  worthy  of  our  best  efforts,  and  appealing  to  the  best 
feelings  of  every  American.  We  are  met  to  pay  honors  to  one  of 
the  heroes  of  peace.  It  is  right,  eminently  right,  that  the  citizens 
of  a  republic  more  than  those  of  any  other  government,  should 
give  a  generous  recognition  to  great  public  merit.  Under  the 
old  systems  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  they  have  their  modes  of 
remunerating  public  benefactors.  There  are  orders  of  merit  that 
are  conferred  upon  them.  There  are  titles  of  nobility  and  pensions 
to  them  and  their  descendants.  To  the  latest  generation,  the  de- 
scendant bears  a  title  which  everywhere  and  'to  all  persons  recalls 
the  great  citizen  upon  whom  that  title  was  first  conferred.  Now 
we,  citizens  of  a  democratic  republic,  have  discarded,  on  principle, 
all  these  methods  of  encouraging  effort  and  rewarding  success.  We 
consider  them  to  be  unreasonable  and  unnecessary,  and  inconsist- 
ent with  the  fair  rights  and  interests  of  the  greatest  number.  But 
it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  for  that  very  reason  there  is  a  ten- 
fold obligation  resting  upon  the  citizens  of  a  republic  to  give  the 
freest  and  most  generous  expression  of  gratitude  and  admiration 
to  their  fellow-citizens  who  have  been  the  benefactors  of  their 
race.  We  have  no  title  of  nobility  to  confer  upon  Morse.  We 
enroll  his  name  in  no  legion  of  honor.  So  much  the  rather  must 
we  give  him  the  admiration  of  our  understandings,  and  the  warm- 
est affections  of  our  hearts. 

Mr.  Mayor,  I  can  contribute  nothing  like  that  which  has  been 
contributed  by  Professor  Horsford,  of  a  scientific  character,  re- 
specting Mr.  Morse.  What  little  I  can  say,  of  a  humbler  sort,  I 
respectfully  submit  to  my  fellow-citizens.  In  my  boyhood  I  knew 
him  ;  in  my  earliest  manhood  I  knew  him.  I  had  the  honor  I  may 
not  truly  say  of  his  friendship,  but  certainly  of  his  most  friendly 


49 

acquaintance.  He  was  connected  with  those  I  most  loved  and 
honored  in  the  world,  by  ties,  not  of  blood,  but  of  affection  and 
common  pursuits  and  common  studies  ;  and  I  know  from  the  earli-^ 
est  period,  before  he  was  known  to  the  world  as  the  great  inven- 
tor, the  affection  and  respect  which  were  entertained  for  him  by  all 
persons  who  came  within  the  range  of  his  acquaintance.  Findley 
Morse, —  by  that  name  I  always  love  to  speak  of  him,  for  so  I  always 
heard  him  called  by  his  friends,  —  Findley  Morse  was  a  youth  of  re- 
markable personal  beauty,  of  very  attractive  manners,  of  a  most  en- 
thusiastic temperament,  of  a  pure  heart  and  a  blameless  life.  There 
are  no  drawbacks  in  the  eulogies  which  we  can  pronounce  upon 
Mr.  Morse.  All  these  characteristics  he  had  ;  and  I  am  reminded 
to-night,  by  seeing  upon  the  platform  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  war 
of  1812  and  '14,  whose  vacant  sleeve  carries  with  it  always  the 
memory  of  the  gallant  sortie  of  Fort  Erie  —  [This  reference  to 
Col.  Aspinwell  was  acknowledged  by  loud  applause]  —  I  am  remind- 
ed that  Mr.  Morse  with  two  or  three  other  Boston  citizens  was, 
unfortunately,  overtaken  and  detained  in  London  by  the  unexpect- 
ed breaking  out  of  that  war.  I  have  frequently  heard  these  gentle- 
men, his  companions  (among  them  Washington  Allston),  speak 
of  this  characteristic  —  the  ardent  and  enthusiastic  patriotism  of 
Mr.  Morse.  It  knew  no  bounds.  So  intense  was  it  that  it  some- 
times endangered  his  personal  safety.  Why,  he  loved  the  old 
frigate  Constitution,  launched  within  sight  of  his  father's  house,  as 
he  loved  his  brother.  When  the  news  came  that  she  had  captured 
the  Guerriere,  and  brought  her  into  Boston,  and  then  again  the 
Java,  his  enthusiasm  rose  to  fever  heat.  Throughout  the  war,  his 
spirits  sunk  or  rose,  like  a  thermometer,  with  the  tidings  of  good 
or  ill  success  of  his  country.  Had  he  been  at  home,  every  faculty 
of  his  ardent  nature  would  have  been  given  to  her  service. 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  Mr.  Morse's  invention  is  the 
most  attractive  to  the  imagination  of  any  ever  made.  Its  utility  and 
extent  no  one  can  overstate.  But- other  inventions  are  vastly  use- 
ful. This  partakes  of  a  .spiritual  character.  If  not  spirit  itself,  it  is 
born  of  the  spirit.  We  often  hear  it  said,  we  sometimes  feel,  that 
progress  in  material  arts,  and  the  advance  of  material  sciences, 
may  tend  to  lower  the  tone  of  the  soul,  and  to  depress  the  highest 
aspirations  of  the  spirit.     As  to  some  of  them,  this  may  be  true  ; 


50 


but  do  we  not  feel  that  in  this  invention,  the  mysteries  of  that 
border  land  between  sense  and  spirit  are  brought  home  into  our 
daily  lives?    Does  not  this  invention  "  feelingly  persuade  us  what 
we  are  "?    Much  of  matter,  which  our  senses  recognize,  but  more 
of  spirit,  which  is  beyond  our  senses.     It  wakes  up  our  imagina- 
tions to  the  truth  that  the  earth  is  filled  with  an  invisible,  intangi- 
ble essence,  of  which  we  see  nothing,  and  know  scarce  more  than 
nothing,  which  yet  a  few  slight  and  simple  applications  of  matter 
anywhere,  everywhere,  can  evoke  and  bring  into  an  intensity  and 
power  of  action  of  which    our  fancies  would   never  have   con- 
ceived, and  which  are  to  us  still  a  never-ending  wonder.   The  most 
powerful  poisons,  indeed,  the  most  powerful  material  agencies  of 
all  kinds,  are  almost  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  their  bulk  and  of  their  ef- 
fect upon  any  of  the  senses.  The  invisible  are  the  most  powerful  of 
all.     Such  results  of  science,  then,  as  Mr.  Morse  has  brought  to 
light,  in  such  fields  of  research,  instead  of  tending  to  belittle  or 
depress  spirit  and  subject  it  to  matter,  teach  us  that  the  forces 
unperceived  by  the  senses  are  the  real  powers  in  the  universe  of 
matter.     They  preach  over  again  to  us  not  in  words,  but  in  act, 
the  sublime  lesson  of  the  Scriptures, —  things  not  seen  are  eternal. 
But,  Mr.  Mayor,  there  are  many  others*  whom  you  have  kindly 
invited  to  say  a  word  to  the  citizens  of  Boston  this  evening,  and  I 
must  not  trespass  further  upon  these  sacred  hours.     I  wish  simply 
to  join  with  my  fellow-citizens,  for  one  moment,  in  the  expressions 
of  gratitude  which  we  owe,  and  which  all  portions  of  the  world 
owe  to  this  great  inventor.     There  is  not  a  spot  of  the  habitable 
earth  that  might  not  well  respond  to-night  in  tones  of  sympathy 
and  gratitude.     The  last  despatch  you  received  was  dated  from 
Egypt.     But,  sir,  that  is  not  all.     I  am  not  over-sanguine,  I  am 
sure,  when  I  say   that  not  many  years  hence  there  will  be  the 
magnetic  telegraph  across  the  deserts  of  Africa.     It  will  wake  into 
life  that  vast  silent  continent,  and  Ethiopia  will  stretch  forth  her 
hands  for  the  grasp  of  her  brethren  throughout  the  world.     One 
touch  of  the  electric  wire,  like  one  touch  of  nature,  makes  the 
whole  world  kin. 

But  of  all  the  places  which  may  well  respond  to-night,  there  is 
none  that  has  a  better  claim  to  be  heard,  none  upon  which  the 
duty  of  speaking  with  the  heart  and  with  the  understanding  in  his 


51 


memory  presses  more  urgently  than  upon  Boston  and  this  hall. 
For,  Mr.  Mayor,  Boston  is  the  capital  of  the  State  of  his  birth  ; 
and  he  was  born  in  one  of  those  valleys  that  lie  between  Bunker 
Hill  and  Faneuil  Hall. 

REMARKS    OF   MR.    E.    P.    WHIPPLE. 

The  Mayor  then    presented  Mr.   Whipple,  who  spoke  as   fol- 
lows :  — 

Mr.  Chairman :  I  am  specially  attracted  to  this  meeting, 
because  its  purpose  is  to  commemorate  the  work  of  an  incentive 
mind.  The  government  of  the  city  of  Boston,  in  calling  a  meet- 
ing in  Faneuil  Hall  to  honor  the  dead  inventor  of  an  invention 
which  can  never  die,  has  shown  itself  on  a  level  with  the  science 
and  the  humanity  of  the  age.  Our  civilization  depends  for  its 
progress  on  an  ever  fresh  supply  of  intellects,  which  force  reluct- 
ant Nature  to  yield  up  secrets  she  jealously  hoards  and  hides. 
Such  intellects  extend  the  dominion  of  the  human  intelligence,  and 
are,  at  the  same  time,  the  beneficent  creators  of  new  wealth,  to 
satisfy  human  needs.  It  is  computed  that  Henry  Cort,  whose 
machines  created  the  iron  manufacture  of  Great  Britain,  added 
£600,000,000  to  its  national  wealth,  and  that  Bessemer's  process' 
of  making  steel  has  already  added  £200,000,000.  Here  is  a  sum, 
equal  to  the  whole  vast  national  debt  of  England,  which  is  to  be 
traced  to  two  inventive  brains.  Great  Britain  spent  a  thousand 
millions  of  pounds  sterling  in  her  twenty  years'  contest  with 
revolutionary  and  imperial  France.  Who  supplied  the  sinews  of 
that  long  and  terrible  war?  The  answer  is,  James  Watt  and- 
Eichard  Arkwright,  two  men  who  gave  to  their  country  labor- 
saving  machines  which  represented  the  manual  labor  of  five  hun- 
dred millions  of  men.  English  statesmen  and  generals,  with  all 
their  blunders,  could  not  waste  wealth  as  fast  as  Watt  and  Ark- 
wright created  it ;  and  the  first  Napoleon  was  at  last  overwhelmed, 
not  by  Pitt,  Perceval,  Liver-pool  or  Wellington,  but  by  two  illus- 
trious inventors,  one  of  whom  began  life  as  a  mathematical  instru- 
ment maker,  and  the  other  as  a  penny  barber.  I  doubt-  if  any  of 
us,  with  all  our  familiarity  with  the  marvels  wrought  by  mechan- 
ical invention,  realize  the  enormous  debt  of  gratitude  we  owe  to 
such  countrymen  of  ours  as  Whitney,  Fulton,  Goodyear,  McCor- 


52 

mick,  Bigelow,  Howe  and  Morse.  As  to  Morse,  he  earned  at  one 
time  a  precarious  living  in  New  Hampshire  by  painting  portraits 
at  fifteen  dollars  a  head.  Who  could  have. supposed  that  from 
such  an  artist  would  have  sprung  such  an  artisan  ? 

But  as  to  Morse's  particular  invention,  allow  me  to  recall  to 
your  memories  the  well-known  lines  of  Byron,  as  he  witnessed  a 
thunder-storm  among  the  Alps  :  — 

"  Could  I  wreak 
My  thoughts  upon  expression,  and  thus  throw- 
Soul,  heart,  mind,  passions,  feelings  —  strong  or  -weak, 
All  that  I  would  have  sought,  and  all  I  seek, 
Bear,  know,  feel,  and^yet  breathe,  into  one  word, 
And  that  one  word  were  Lightning,  I  would  speak." 

"Well,  Morse  has  not  only  compelled  lightning  to  speak,  but  to 
write.  He  has  forced  it  not  merely  to  flash  terror,  but  to  flash 
intelligence.  He  has  made  it  the  obedient,  humble  servant  of  the 
meanest  as  well  as  the  greatest  of  men  and  women.  Under  his 
control,  it  condescends  even  to  be  doting,  garrulous,  insipid,  a 
retailer  of  gossip,  a  thrall  of  scandal-mongers.  You  all  recollect 
the  remark  of  the  old  lady,  when  she  saw  the  telegraphic  poles  set 
up  before  her  country  cottage.  "  Now,"  she  spitefully  said,  "  I 
suppose  nobody  can  whip  a  child  without  its  being  known  all 
over  creation."  Certainly  not,  my  good  woman !  The  press  of 
Calcutta  and  St.  Petersburg  will  hear  every  slap,  hold  you  to  a 
strict  account,  and  stigmatize  every  stroke  of  superfluous  castiga- 
tion  of  infantile  disobedience.  Even  the  restless  Yankee  who, 
asking  the  operator,  in  the  early  days  of  the  telegraph,  how  long 
it  would  take  to  send  a  message  to  Washington,  and  being 
informed  it  would  take  five  minutes,  replied,  "  I  can't  wait,"  can 
now  be  satisfied.  By  the  blessed  difference  in  time,  he  can  at 
present  be  consoled  by  the  assurance  that  his  telegraphs  to  some 
places  will  arrive  several  hours  before  he  sent  them !  In  short, 
Franklin  drew  the  lightning  from  the  skies ;  Morse  has  sent  it 
over  the  earth  to  run  errands,  —  an  ignominious  but  still  to  us  a 
very  convenient  work  for  an  element  in  itself  so  sublime,  so  smit- 
ing and  so  wrathful ! 

But   the   taming   of    the   seemingly   untamable   lightning  has 


53 

worked  noble  as  well  as  frivolous  results.  It  enables  great  nations 
to  communicate  with  each  other  in  a  minute  of  time,  and  to  avoid 
war  by  the  instantaneous  flashing  of  the  thoughts  of  each  states- 
man into  the  minds  of  all  statesmen.  It  enables  the  great 
merchant,  in  his  summer  resort  at  Newport  or  Saratoga,  to  direct 
the  courses  of  his  ships,  separated  from  him  by  three,  or  ten,  or 
fifteen  thousand  miles  of  mere  distance,  and  equalizes  prices  by 
demonstrating  the  folly  of  monopoly.  It  enables  the  press  to 
annihilate  space,  and  to  bring,  every  morning  and  evening,  Eu- 
rope, Asia  and  Africa  to  your  doors.  And  last,  though  not  least, 
it  makes  every  throb  of  the  human  heart  —  every  dear  and  tender 
anxiety  for  absent  friends,  parents,  lovers  —  known  everywhere, 
and  converts  Boston,  London,  Paris,  Berlin,  Bombay  and  Hong 
Kong  into  one  great  metropolitan  city. 

REMARKS    OP    HON.    GEORGE    S.    HILLARD. 

Mr.  Hillard  was  then  introduced.     He  said  :  — 

It  is  an  honorable  fact  in  the  history  of  our  country  that  at  this 
moment,  all  over  the  land,  men  are  met  together  to  do  honor  to  a 
man  whose  claims  to  memory  and  distinction  rest  upon  the  fact 
that  he  was  eminentty  successful  in  applying  the  laws  of  science 
to  the  arts  of  life.  With  peculiar  propriety  it  belongs  to  us  to  do 
honor  to  Mr.  Morse,  because  he  was  of  us.  He  was  born  but  a 
rifle-shot  from  this  spot ;  he  was  reared  under  influences  indige- 
nous to  our  soil.  We  have  a  right  to  a  local  pride  in  him.  Local 
pride,  national  pride,  is  a  proper  and  commendable  sentiment, 
within  reasonable  limits.  We  have  a  right  to  be  proud  of  our 
great  men.  Every  great  man  is  the  product  of  two  factors  ;  one 
is  his  original  capacity,  and  the  other  the  institutions  and  condi- 
tions under  which  he  was  reared.  I  suppose  Mr.  Morse  would 
hardly  have  invented  the  electric  telegraph  if  he  had  been  born  in 
Mexico  or  Peru. 

I  do  not  propose,  fellow-citizens,  to  travel  over  the  ground 
which  my  predecessors  have  traversed.  Who  is  he  that  cometh 
after  three  such  kings?  Allow  me  to  deflect  a  little,  seemingly, 
from  the  path  of  thought  before  us  ;  and  yet  I  mean  to  be  guided 


54 

by  a  law  which  shall  in  due  season  bring  me  back  again.  I  am 
reminded  here,  to-night,  of  two  other  men,  between  whose  lives 
and  that  of  Mr.  Morse  there  is  a  peculiar  parallelism.  One  of. 
these,  Franklin,  has  already  been  mentioned,  was  all  our  own. 
He  was  born  here,  in  Boston,  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century. 
The  other  is  Count  Rumford,  born  in  Woburn,  about  ten  miles  off. 
Franklin  was  born  about  forty  years  before  Rumford,  and  Rum- 
ford  about  forty  years  before  Morse.  Their  respective  birth  dates 
mark  the  beginning,  the  middle,  and  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  These  three  men  were  memorable  for  investigations  and 
inventions  in  heat,  light,  electricity,  and  electro-magnetism, —  those 
airy  and  imponderable  essences  which  seem  more  like  thought 
acting  through  matter  than  like  matter  itself.  All  three  were 
practical  men,  making  their  science  subserve  the  use  and  wants  of 
man  in  daily  life.  With  the  first  we  associate  the  lightning  rod 
and  the  Franklin  stove,  and  with  the  second,  the  Rumford  oven 
and  the  Rumford  fireplace.  These,  you  may  say,  are  but  simple, 
trivial  things ;  but  in  a  climate  where  for  eight  months  in  the 
year  our  first  thought  is  how  to  keep  warm,  the  man  that  econo- 
mizes fuel  on  a  great  scale  is  a  public  benefactor.  And  so  is  he 
who  lightens  to  one  half  of  creation  the  daily  burden  of  cooking. 
But  Franklin  and  Rumford,  besides  being  practical  men,  were 
great  scientific  discoverers.  Franklin  discovered  the  identity  of 
lightning  and  electricity,  and  Rumford  that  heat  is  but  a  mode  of 
motion.  These  are  vital  and  germinating  truths.  You  know  how 
high  is  the  place  of  Franklin  on  the  rolls  of  fame,  as  a  man  of 
science ;  and  I  have  the  impression  that  the  reputation  of  Rum- 
ford as  a  scientific  discoverer  is  rather  on  the  increase  at  the 
present  time. 

In  other  respects  these  three  eminent  men  were  alike.  Each 
reached  a  good  old  age ;  each  had  the  good  fortune,  which  all 
inventors  and  discoverers  do  not.  have,  of  reaping  the  harvest  of 
success  with  their  own  hands.  While  yet  alive,  they  had  honors, 
recognition,  and  wealth  ;  they  did  not  die  before  the  sight  of  the 
promised  land,  towards  which  their  hopes  and  their  thoughts  were 
turned.  And  there  is  another  point  in  which  these  men  were 
alike,  that  is  the  patience  and  tenacity  with  which  they  grasped 
an  idea,  and  never  let  it  go  till  success  was  achieved  ;  the  power  . 


55 

of  steadily  contemplating  a  subject,  without  turning  their  glance 
to  the  right  or  the  left,  which  Sir  Isaac  Newton  said  was  the  only 
point  wherein,  so  far  as  he  knew,  he  excelled  other  men. 

Mr.  Morse  did  not  pretend  to  be  an  original  discoverer  in 
science.  He  would  have  disclaimed  all  such  honor,  for  he  was  a 
modest  man.  His  merit,  as  Prof.  Horsford  has  told  you,  was,  in 
the  first  place,  the  skill  and  ingenuity  with  which  he  devised  an 
instrument  more  expeditious,  simple,  and  cheap  for  doing  what 
others,  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  were  also  trying  to  do ;  and  in 
the  second  place,  the  perseverance  with  which  he  persisted  in 
knocking  at  the  door  of  Congress  for  aid,  never  discouraged  by 
repulse,  until  at  last,  as  iron  is  made  hot  by  repeated  blows,  apa- 
tlry  and  opposition  were  alike  overcome  ;  and  success  crowned  his 
labors.  Many  men,  by  tongue  or  pen,  drop  brilliant  hints,  striking 
suggestions,  make  lucky  guesses  and  happy  predictions,  but  as 
Paley  says,  he  alone  discovers  who  proves.  It  is  the  man  who 
puts  an  idea  into  shape,  who  gives  it  form  and  substance,  and  he 
alone,  who  writes  his  name  on  the  enduring  tablets  of  fame. 

Another  remarkable  thing  about  Mr.  Morse  was  that  he  was 
forty  years  old  before  he  began  to  think  of  being  a  man  of  science. 
Up  to  the  age  of  forty  he  was  an  artist ;  and  in  that  capacity 
more  than  respectable ;  indeed  of  high  merit.  In  the  sixteenth 
century  there  were  men  who  were  eminent  in  art  and  science  both. 
Michael  Angelo  was  one  ;  Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  another.  The 
latter  was  eminent  in  science,  and  it  is  only  his  greatness  as  an 
artist  that  has  thrown  his  scientific  reputation  into  the  shade. 
But  I  don't  recall  anybody  during  the  last  hundred  years  who  was, 
as  Mr.  Whipple  so  felicitously  said,  first  an  artist  and  then  an 
artisan,  as  Morse  was.  For  forty  years  he  was  a  creator  of  beauty. 
He  then  left  these  flowery  paths  and  gave  himself  to  the  stern 
realities  of  practical  life,  and  what  marvellous  results  he  accom- 
plished !  It  is  never  too  late,  my  friends,  to  turn  over  a  new  leaf 
in  the  great  book  of  knowledge. 

Nor  should  we  forget  here  the  man,  Morse,  when  we  are  met  to 
honor  him  as  an  artist  and  an  artisan.  Behind  the  fact  of  what  a 
man  does,  there  stands  the  fact  of  what  he  is.  Mr.  Morse  will 
here  bear  the  strictest  scrutiny.  There  have  been  artists  of  great 
genius  whose  lives  their  biographers  have  been  willing  to  throw 


56 

into  shadow ;  and  there  have  been  men  of  science  with  infirmities 
of  temper  and  weaknesses  of  character  over  which  charity  draws 
a  veil.  But  Mr.  Morse  was  always  a  man  of  high  personal  char- 
acter. When  an  artist,  he  resisted  the  peculiar  temptations  to 
which  artists,  from  their  impressionable  temperament,  are  often 
apt  to  yield.  He  was  simple  in  his  habits,  a  hard  worker,  and 
pure  in  life  and  conversation.  The  beauty  he  worshipped  was 
high  and  ideal,  not  sensual  or  debasing.  So  when  we  view  him 
as  a  man  of  science,  we  see  the  same  elements  of  character  ;  self- 
respect,  self-control,  no  unseemly  self-assertion,  no  taste  for  need- 
less controversy,  but  always  a  calm,  serene,  equable  spirit.  His 
was  a  noble  life  in  both  respects,  that  of  art  and  that  of  science. 

Heaven  gave  him  not  merely  honor  and  wealth,  but  also  other 
blessings.  It  gave  him  an  old  age, without  infirmities,  an  old  age 
surrounded  by  all  that  should  accompany  old  age.  His  death  was 
the  going  down  of  a  great  light  in  a  calm  and  serene  horizon. 

As  I  have  before  said,  it  is  an  honorable  thing  for  us  that  we 
come  here  to  do  honor  to  the  memory  of  this  eminent,  this  pure 
and  good  man.  It  marks  a  progress  in  civilization  when  men 
assemble  to  do  honor,  not  merely  to  the  great  soldier  and  the 
great  statesman,  —  all  praise  to  them  in  their  spheres,  —  but  to 
the  artist,  who  pours  the  hues  of  beauty  around  the  paths  of  daily 
life ;  to  the  scientific  discoverer,  who  by  patient  investigation 
forces  coy  and  reluctant  nature  to  reveal  the  secrets  she  is  always 
anxious  to  hide ;  to  the  practical  mechanician  who  applies  these 
laws  to  the  service  of  humanity,  lightening  the  burden  of  toil  and 
the  pressure  of  poverty.  These  men  are  heroes  ;  they  are  soldiers 
in  that  great  battle  which  has  always  been  going  on  between  igno- 
rance and  knowledge,  error  and  truth.  Their  triumphs  are  with- 
out alloy ;  their  victories  are  bloodless ;  in  them  is  not  mingled 
the  wail  of  the  widow  or  the  tear  of  the  orphan. 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  A. 


The  effect  of  the  suggested  addition  of  more  cups  and  coils  was 
no  surprise  to  Professor  Morse.  It  was  precisely  what  he  ex- 
pected, and  had  assumed,  and,  one  may  add,  would  have  exhib- 
ited, if  he  had  had  the  means  before  the  interview  with  Dr.  Gale. 

Whatever  Dr.  G-ale  may  have  said  to  Professor  Morse  at  any 
time,  the  latter  was  obviously  unconscious  that  any  suggestions  he, 
Dr.  Gale,  had  made,  were  other  than  such  as  might  be  made  by 
any  one  familiar  with  the  principles  of  electro-magnetism  then 
knoivn,  acting  as  his  "  confidential  scientific  friend."  He 
lodged  his  caveat  in  1837,  applied  for  his  patent  April  7,  183«, 
and  sailed  for  Europe  immediately  after.  He  returned  in  March, 
1839,  and  found  Dr.  Gale  had  sailed  on  the  very  day  of  his  arrival, 
for  New  Orleans.  In  the  following  month  (April  24,  1839),  he. 
wrote  Professor  Henry  as  follows :  — 

"New  York,  April  24,  1839. 
"  My  dear  Sir,  —  On  my  return,  a  few  clays  since,  from  Europe, 
I  found  directed  to  me,  through  your  politeness,  a  copy  of  your 
valuable  '  Contributions,'  for  which  I  beg  you  to  accept  my  warm- 
est thanks.  The  various  cares  consequent  upon  so  long  an  absence 
from  home,  and  which  have  demanded  my  more  immediate  atten- 
tion, have  prevented  me  from  more  than  a  cursory  perusal  of  its 
interesting  contents  ;  yet  I  perceive  many  things  of  great  interest 
to  me  in  my  telegraphic  enterprise.  I  was  glad  to  learn,  by  a  let- 
ter received  in  Paris  from  Dr.  Gale,  that  a  spool  of  five  miles  of 
wire  was  loaned  to  you,  and  I  perceive  that  you  have  already  made 
some  interesting  experiments  with  it.  In  the  absence  of  Dr.  Gale, 
who  has  gone  South,  I  feel  a  great  desire  to  consult  some  scientific 
gentleman  on  points  of  importance  bearing  upon  my  telegraph, 
which  I  am  about  to  construct  in  Russia,  being;  under  an  engage- 


60 


ment  with  the  Russian  government  agent  to  return  to  Europe  for 
that  purpose  in  a  few  weeks.  I  should  be  exceedingly  happy  to 
see  you,  and  am  tempted  to  break  away  from  my  absorbing  engage- 
ments here  to  find  you  at  Princeton.  In  case  I  should  be  able  to 
visit  Princeton  for  a  few  days,  a  week  or  two  hence,  how  shall  I 
find  you  engaged  ?  I  should  come  as  a  learner,  and  could  bring 
no  '  contributions '  to  your  stock  of  experiments  of  any  value,  nor 
any  means  of  furthering  your  experiments,  except,  perhaps,  the 
loan  of  an  additional  five  miles  of  wire,  which  it  may  be  desirable 
for  you  to  have. 

"  I  have  many  questions  to  ask,  but  should  be  happy,  in  your 
reply  to  this  letter,  of  an  answer  to  this  general  one :  Have  you 
met  with  any  facts,  in  your  experiments  thus  far,  that  would  lead 
you  to  think  that  my  mode  of  telegraphic  communication  will  prove 
impracticable  ?  So  far  as  I  have  consulted  the  savans  of  Paris,  they 
have  suggested  no  insurmountable  difficulties.  I  have,  however, 
quite  as  much  confidence  in  your  judgment,  from  your  valua- 
ble experience,  as  in  that  of  any  one  I  have  met  abroad.  I  think 
that  you  have  pursued  an  original  course  of  experiment,  and  dis- 
covered facts  of  more  value  to  me  than  you  have  published  abroad. 

"  I  will  not  trouble  you  at  this  time  with  my  questions  until  I 
know  your  engagements.  Accompanying  this  is  the  copy  of  a  Re- 
port made  by  the  Academy  of  Industry,  of  Paris,  on  my  telegraph, 
which  I  beg  you  to  accept. 

"  Believe  me,  my  dear  sir, 

"  With  the  highest  respect, 

"  Your  most  obedient  servant, 

"  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse. 

"  To  Prof.  Joseph  Henry,  Princeton." 

To  this  letter  was  received  the  following  reply  :  — 

"Princeton,  May  6,  1839. 
"Dear  Sir,  —  Your  favor  of  the  24th  ult.  came  to  Princeton 
during  my  absence,  which  will  account  for  the  long  delay  of  my 
answer.  I  am  pleased  to  learn  that  you  fully  sanction  the  loan 
which  I  obtained  from  Dr.  Gale,  of  your  wire,  and  I  shall  be  happy 
if  any  of  the  results  are  found  to  have  a  practical  bearing  on  the 
electrical  telegraph. 


61 


"  It  will  give  me  great  pleasure  to  see  you  in  Princeton  after 
this  week  ;  my  engagements  will  not  then  interfere  with  our  com- 
munications on  the  subject  of  electrioity.  During  this  week  I  shall 
be  almost  constantly  engaged  with  a  friend  in  some  scientific 
labors  which  we  are  prosecuting  together. 

"lam  acquainted  with  no  fact  which  would  lead  me  to  suppose 
that  the  project  of  the  electro-magnetic  telegraph  is  impracticable  ; 
on  the  contrary,  I  believe  that  science  is  now  ripe  for  the  applica- 
tion, and  that  there  are  no  difficulties  in  the  way,  but  such  as 
ingenuity  and  enterprise  may  obviate.  But  what  form  of  the  ap- 
paratus, or  what  application  of  the  power  will  prove  best,  can,  I 
believe,  be  only  determined  by  careful  experiment.  I  can  say, 
however,  that  so  far  as  I  am  acquainted  with  the  minutiae  of  your 
plan,  I  see  no  practical  difficulty  in  the  way  of  its  application  for 
comparatively  short  distances;  but  if  the  length  of  the  wire  between 
the  stations  be  great,  I  think  that  some  other  modification  will  be 
found  necessary,  in  order  to  develop  a  sufficient  power  at  the  farther 
end  oj  the  line.  I  shall,  however,  be  happy  to  converse  freely  with 
you  on  these  points  when  we  meet.  In  the  mean  time,  I  remain, 
"  With  much  respect,  yours,  etc., 

"  Joseph  Henry. 

"  To  Professor  Morse." 

Now  at  this  period  the  telegraph  had  been  exhibited  in  practical 
operation,  first,  with  a  short  circuit  to  numerous  friends  and 
pupils,  in  1835,  then,  with  a  circuit  of  ten  miles,  to  the  public  in 
New  York,  in  1837  ;  to  a  committee  of  the  Franklin  Institute,  in 
January  of  1838,  and  for  three  months  following  to  the  Cabinet 
and  Congress  at  Washington ;  to  the  Academy  of  Science  and 
thousands  of  visitors  in  Paris  in  the  autumn  of  this  3rear.  All  this 
happened  before  he  had  read  Professor  Henry's  paper.  As  his 
apparatus  employed  ten  miles  of  wire,  and  Professor  Henry's 
paper  spoke  of  the  use  of  but  ten  hundred  and  sixty  feet,  it  is  not 
singular  that  he  should  have  felt  that  he  did  not  owe  the  discov- 
ery that  the  effective  current  could  be  sent  through  great  distances 
to  Professor  Henry. 

"  A  few  days  after  the  receipt  of  this  letter,"  says  Professor 
Morse  in  his  account,  "  I  visited  him,  having  prepared  beforehand 


a  few  questions,  the  better  to  economize  his  time.  The  following 
is  the  copy  of  the  original  paper  (which  I  preserved)  with  the  an- 
swers of  Prof.  Henry,  so  far  as  they  were  given,  put  down  by  me 
in  pencil  at  the  time  :  — 

Questions  prepared  to  ask  Professor  Henry  and  shown  him  in 
my  visit,  May,  1839,  and  his  answers  on  reading  them  to  him  : — 

1st.  Have  you  any  reason  to  think  that  magnetism  cannot  be 
induced  in  soft  iron,  at  the  distance  of  one  hundred  miles  or  more, 
by  a  single  impulse,  or  from  a  single  battery  apparatus?  —  "  No." 

•2d.  Suppose  that  a  horseshoe  magnet  of  soft  iron,  of  a  given 
size,  receive  its  maximum  of  magnetism  by  a  given  number  of 
coils  around  it,  of  wire  or  of  ribbon,-  and  by  a  given-sized  battery, 
or  number  of  batteries,  at  a  given  distance  from  the  battery,  does 
a  succession  of  magnets  introduced  into  the  circuit  diminish  the 
magnetism  in  each? — "  No." 

3d.  Have  you  ascertained  the  law  which  regulates  the  propor- 
tion of  quantity  and  intensity  from  the  voltaic  battery  necessary 
to  overcome  the  resistance  of  the  wire  in  long  distances,  in  induc- 
ing magnetism  in  soft  iron? — "  Ohm  has  determined  it." ' 

The  only  remaining  letter  to  Professor  Morse  affords  evidence 
of  the  kindly  interest  of  Professor  Henry  in  the  invention  of  Pro^- 
fessor  Morse,  and  is  here  inserted. 

"  Princeton  College,  Feb,  24th,  1842. 
"  My  dear  Sir, —  I  am  pleased  to  hear  you  have  again  petitioned 
Congress  in  reference  to  your  telegraph,  and  I  most  sincerely  hope 
you  will  succeed  in  convincing  our  representatives  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  invention.  In  this  you  may,  perhaps,  find  some  diffi- 
culty, since,  in  the  minds  of  many,  the  electro-magnetic  telegraph 
is  associated  with  the  various  chimerical  projects  constantly  pre- 
sented to  the  public,  and  particularly  with  the  schemes  so  popular 
a  year  or  two  ago  for  the  application  of  electricity  as  a  moving 
power  in  the  arts.  I  have  asserted,  from  the  first,  that  all  attempts 
of  this  kind  are  premature,  and  made  without  a  proper  knowledge 
of  scientific  principles.  The  case  is,  however,  entirely  different  in 
regard  to  the  electro-magnetic  telegraph.    Science  is  now  fully  ripe 


63 


for  this  application,  and  I  have  not  the  least  doubt,  if  proper  means 
be  afforded,  of  the  per  feet  success  of  the  invention. 

"  The  idea  of  transmitting  intelligence  to  a  distance  by  means  of 
electric  action  has  been  suggested  by  various  persons,  from  the 
time  of  Franklin  to  the  present ;  but  until  within  the  last  few 
years,  or  since  the  principal  discoveries  in  electro-magnetism,  all 
attempts  to  reduce  it  to  practice-  were  necessarily  unsuccessful. 
The  mere  suggestion,  however,  of  a  scheme  of  this  kind,  is  a  mat- 
ter for  which  little  credit  can  be  claimed,  since  it  is  one  which 
would  naturally  arise  in  the  mind  of  almost  any  person  familiar 
with  the  phenomena  of  electricity  ;  but  the  bringing  it  forward  at 
the  proper  moment  when  the  developments  of  science  are  able  to 
furnish  the  means  of  certain  success,  and  the  devising  a  plan  for 
carrying  it  into  practical  operation,  are  the  grounds  of  a  just  claim 
to  scientific  reputation  as  well  as  to  public  patronage. 

"  About  the  same  time  with  yourself,  Professor  Wheatstone,  of 
London,  and  Dr.  Steinheil,  of  Germany,  proposed  plans  of  the 
electro-magnetic  telegraph ;  but.  these  differ  as  much  from  yours  as 
the  nature  of  the  common  principle  would  well  permit ;  and  unless 
some  essential  improvements  have  lately  been  made  in  these 
European  plans,  I  should  prefer  the  one  invented  by  yourself. 

"  With  my  best  wishes  for  your  success,  I  remain,  with  much 
esteem,  Yours  truly, 

"  (Signed)  Joseph  Henry. 

"  Professor  Morse." 


APPENDIX  B. 


The  Abbe  Moigno  published  in  1837  a  letter  from  Dr.  Jackson, 
in  which  the  latter  lays  claim  to  the  whole  invention  of  Morse's 
telegraph.  The  claim  is  repeated  in  the  "  Boston  Post,"  in  1839.* 
This  claim  is  supported  in  some  degree  by  a  statement  of  Dr. 
Hamel,  of  St.  Petersburg,  who  visited  this  country  during  the 
Crimean  war,  and  saw  the  note-book  of  Dr.  Jackson.  It  is  in- 
timated in  the  work  of  Kuhn  (Leipsic,  1866)  that  the  claim  of 
Morse  to  the  period  of  1832  as  the  date  of  the  invention  of  the 
Morse  telegraph  shows  a  want  of  love  of  truth. 

In  view  of  these  imputatians  upon  the  good  name  of  a  man,  all 
of  whose  writings  and  private  and  public  life  point  him  out  as 
high-toned  and  sensitively  just  and  truth-loving,  and  in  view  of 
my  instructions  to  present  a  sketch  of  Professor  Morse's  connec- 
tion with  the  electric  telegraph,  I  have  no  alternative  but  to  pro- 
ceed to  the  vindication  of  Professor  Morse. 

The  public  notice  of  Cooke  and  Wheatstone's  telegraph,  in  1837, 
had  awakened  Professor  Morse's  solicitude  lest  the  honor  of  the 
first  invention  of  a  practical  working  telegraph  should  be  lost  to 

*In  an  article  in  the  "Boston  Post,"  of  January,  1839,  the  data  of  which 
were  furnished  by  Dr.  Jackson,  occurs  the  following  :  "  We  are  informed  that 
the  invention  of  the  electro-magnetic  telegraph,  which  has  been  claimed  by 
Mr.  S.  F.  B.  Morse,  of  New  York,  is  entirely  due  to  our  fellow-citizen,  Dr. 
Charles  T.  Jackson,  who  first  conceived  the  idea  of  such  an  instrument  dur- 
ing his  return  voyage  from  Europe  in  the  packet  ship  Sully,  in  October,  1832. 

"  The  origin  of  the  idea  of  the  telegraph,  as  above  stated,  can  he  proved  by 
a  number  of  passengers  on  board  the  Sully;  and  Mr.  Bives,  the  American 
ambassador  to  France,  Mr.  Fisher,  of  Philadelphia,  and  Captain  Pell,  of  the 
Sully,  having  listened  to  the  conversation,  will  recollect  that  Mr.  Morse  ac- 
knowledged himself  wholly  unacquainted  with  electro  magnetism,  and  that  Dr. 
J.  freely  informed  him  of  every  particular  discovery  applicable  to  the  case." 

In  a  deposition  made  in  1848,  Dr.  Jackson  appeals  to  the  same  gentlemen, 
—  "During  the  conversation  with  Mr.  Bives  and  Mr.  Fisher,  were  piesent 
two  Messrs.  Palmer  of  New  York,  and  Captain  "William  Pell." 


66 


our  country.  Conscious  that  his  invention  had  been  made  on  board 
the  Sully,  in  1832,  he  addressed  a  circular  letter  to  several  of  his 
fellow-passeugers,  expecting  with  their  replies  to  be  able  to  confirm 
his  claim  to  priority.     The  letter  was  as  follows  :  — 

"New  York  City  University,  August  27,  1837. 
"  Dear  Sir  : —  You  may  have  seen  some  notice  in  the  papers  of 
an  electric  telegraph,  of  which  I  am  the  inventor.  There  is  to  be 
a  contest,  it  seems,  for  priori  of  invention  of  this  electric  telegraph 
between  England  and  France,  Germany  and  this  country.  I  claim 
for  myself,  and  consequently  for  America,  priority  over  all  other 
countries  in  the  invention  of  a  mode  of  communicating  intelligence 
by  electricity.  My  object  in  writing  you  is  to  ask  whether  you  re- 
member my  conversing  on  the  subject  of  the  electric  telegraph,  as 
my  invention,  when  a  fellow-passenger  with  you  on  board  the  ship 
Sully,  Capt.  Pell,  in  the  month  of  October,  1832.  If  you  do, 
please  inform  me  as  soon  as  possible,  and  state  precisely  what  you 
remember  concerning  it.  Your  testimony  to  the  fact  of  my  having 
invented  it  at  the  time  will  be  important  in  establishing  the  prior- 
ity of  the  American  invention. 

"  With  sincere  respect,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

"  S.  F.  B.  MORSE." 

To  the  letter  to  Dr.  Jackson  he  added  the  following  sentence : 
"  My  plan  of  marking  by  means  of  an  electro-magnet  has  proved 
completely  successful." 

To  the  letter  to  Captain  Pell  he  added  this  sentence  :  "  Have  you 
ever  spoken  of  my  invention  to  passengers  in  subsequent  passages  ?" 

To  the  letter  to  Mr.  Palmer,  this  sentence :  "  If  those  of  your 
family  who  remember  anything  of  the  matter  would  testify  to  the 
same  it  would  be  doing  me  an  essential  service." 

In  answer,  he  received  from  Mr.  Fisher  the  following  under  date 
of  September  19th,  1837,  and  said  :  — 

"  I  certainly  recollect  many  conversations  with  you  on  the  sub- 
ject of  an  electric  telegraph,  during  our  voyage  from  Europe,  in  the 
Sully,  in  October,  1832 

"  I  am  at  any  time  ready  to  give  my  certificate  that  you  proposed 


67 


and  were  occupied  about  the  details  of  an  electric  telegraph  at  the 
time  referred  to.  Wishing  you  all  success  in  this  as  well  as  every 
other  occupation,  and  that  the  establishment  of  your  fame  for  this 
invention  may  be  as  extensive  as  it  is  deserved, 

"  I  remain,"  etc. 

Captain  Pell  answered  on  the  27th  September,  1838,  and  among 
other  things  said  :  — 

"lam  happy  to  say  I  have  a  distinct  remembrance  of  your  sug- 
gesting, as  thought  newly  occurred  to  you,  the  possibility  of  a 
telegraphic  communication  being  effected  by  electric  wires.  As 
the  passage  progressed,  and  your  idea  developed  itself,  it  became 
frequently  a  subject  of  conversation.  Difficulty  after  difficulty  was 
suggested  as  obstacles  to  its  operation,  which  your  ingenuity  still 
labored  to  remove,  until  your  invention,  passing  from  its  first  crude 
state  through  different  grades  of  perfectionment,  was,  in  seeming, 
matured  to  an  available  instrument,  wanting  only  patronage  to 
perfect  it  and  call  it  into  reality.  And  I  sincerely  trust  that  cir- 
cumstances may  not  deprive  you  of  the  reward  due  to  the  inven- 
tion, which,  whatever  be  its  source  in  Europe,  is  with  you  at  least 
I  am  convinced,  original." 

Mr.  Rives  answered  on  the  21st  of  September,  1837,  and  said  :  — 

"  I  retain  a  distinct  recollection  of  your  having  explained  to  me 
the  conception  of  this  ingenious  invention  during  our  voyage  from 
France  to  the  United  States,  in  the  autumn  of  1832,  and  that  it 
was  more  than  once  the  subject  of  conversation  between  us,  in 
which  I  suggested  difficulties  that  you  met  and  solved  with  great 
promptitude  and  confidence." 

Mr.  Charles  C.  Palmer  had  left  the  country  3  we  believe,  and  did 
not  answer. 

It  is  evident,  from  the  depositions  and  letters  of  Mr.  J.  F.  Fisher, 
of  Philadelphia,  Hon.  William  C.  Rives,  of  Virginia,  ex-minister  to 
France,  fellow-passengers  with  Professor  Morse  and  Doctor  Jack- 
son in  the  Sully  in  1832,  and  Captain  William  Pell,  chief  officer 
of  the  vessel,  gentlemen  to  whom  Doctor  Jackson  confidently  ap- 


68 


pealed  to  confirm  his  claims  to  the  originality  of  the  idea  of  the 
new  telegraph,  did  not  remember  any  person  in  connection  with 
the  discovery  and  invention  but  Professor  Morse.  (See  note,  p.  65.) 

After  Professor  Morse  received  Doctor  Jackson's  letter  of  the 
seventh  of  November,  1837,  in  which  the  latter  attributed  to  Mr. 
Rives  or  Mr.  Fisher  the  first  suggestion  of  sending  news  by  elec? 
tricity,  he  —  Prof.  Morse  —  wrote  another  letter  to  Mr.  Fisher, 
dated  November  14th,  1837,  in  which  he  propounded  the  following 
questions,  viz. :  — 

"  First.  Do  you  recollect  having  made  the  observation  attrib- 
uted either  to  j^ou  or  to  Mr.  Rives  ? 

"  Second.  Have  you  any  impression,  from  your  recollection  of 
what  occurred  on  board  the  Sully,  that  any  other  person  than  my- 
self was  the  inventor  of  the  electric  telegraph  ?  " 

On  the  seventeenth,  Mr.  Fisher  answered  to  the  first  inquiry, 
"  Certainly  not ;  and  it  would  have  been  strange,  if  not  silly,  to 
have  done  so,  since  the  first  mention  of  an  electric  or  galvanic  tel- 
egraph by  you  implied  the  possibility." 

To  the  second,  he  answered,  "  I  had  no  idea  that  any  of  our  fel- 
low-passengers could  claim  the  credit  of  it.  I  am  quite  sure  I  re- 
ceived my  first  idea  of  it  from  you;  that  you  were  most  interested 
in  it ;  that  you  alone  seemed  inclined  to  test  its  practicability  after 
landing,"  etc. 

Professor  Morse  also  wrote  to  Mr.  Rives  making  similar  inqui- 
ries, and  received  an  answer,  dated  March  1st,  1838,  in  which  that 
gentlemen  says :  — 

"  I  am  utterly  surprised  that  any  one  should  have  given  me 
credit  for  suggesting  it.  I  am  perfectly  sure  that  such  a  concep- 
tion had  never  entered  my  mind,  and  that  it  was  a  complete  nov- 
elty to  me  when  first  presented  to  my  contemplation  by  your  con- 
versations during  the  progress  of  the  voyage  above  mentioned. 
Wishing  you,  my  dear  sir,  great  success  in  maturing  and  carrying 
into  execution  an  invention  which  promises  to  mark  a  new  era  in 
the  progress  of  improvements,  I  remain,"  etc. 

This  letter  was  written  by  Mr.  Rives  some  months  after  Dr. 
Jackson  wrote  to  him  claiming  that  he  was  the  inventor,  and  ask- 
ing a  statement  to  that  effect. 

On  the  20th  of  January,  1838,  Professor  Morse  again  wrote  to 


69 


Captain  Pell,  with  the  view  of  establishing  the  originality  of  his 
invention  against  Dr.  Jackson's  claim.  In  his  reply,  dated  Feb- 
ruary 1st,  1838,  Captain  Pell  said  :  — 

"  It  is  a  matter  of  great  astonishment  to  me,  that  a  fellow-pas- 
senger with  us  in  the  Sully  from  Havre,  in  October,  1832,  should 
attempt  to  contest  with  you  the  claim  of  having  been  the  inventor 
of  the  electric  telegraph,  which  occupied  so  much  of  your  atten- 
tion during  the  passage,  or  that  there  was  one  on  board  of  her 
who  had  any  claim  to  even  a  participation  of  its  honors. 

"  My  impressions  rest  upon  my  mind  with  the  freshness  and 
force  of  conviction,  that  you  only  on  board  of  that  ship  was  the 
originator  of  the  invention  ;  that  your  mind  alone  seemed  inter- 
ested in  it  with  any  seriousness  of  purpose,  even  after  its  first  sug- 
gestion by  you  ;  and  while  it. was,  in  seeming,  the  daily  and  favor- 
ite object  of  your  study,  which  was  each  day  developing  it  into  a 
higher  perfection. 

"  So,  when  a  few  days  since  I  examined  your  instrument,  I  rec- 
ognized in  it  the  principles  and  mechanical  arrangements  which  on 
board  I  had  heard  yon  so  frequently  explain  through  all  its  de- 
velopments. With  the  sincere  wish  that  no  hand  may  be  so  rash 
as  to  persist  in  the  attempt  to  snatch  from  you  the  reward  which 
belongs  to  you,  I  subscribe  myself,"  etc. 

While  in  Paris,  in  1839,  Professor  Morse  received  intelligence 
that  Dr.  Jackson  had  set  up  a  claim  to  his  entire  invention;  and 
having  ascertained  that  one  of  the  Palmers  resided  at  Rahan,  in 
Ireland,  he  addressed  him  a  letter,  dated  Paris,  February  22d, 
1839,  from  which  the  following  is  an  extract,  viz.  :  — 

"  Please  to  designate  whom  you  believe  to  be  the  inventor.  Have 
you  any  idea  that  any  other  person  on  board  that  ship  could  claim  to 
be  the  inventor,  or  to  be  a  participator  in  the  invention  of  the  Electro- 
Magnetic  Telegraph,'  as  there  planned?  My  object  in  requesting  an 
answer  to  this  question  is  to  defend  myself  against  a  claim  just 
publicly  made  by  one  of  our  fellow  passengers,  who,  since  the  an- 
noucement  of  the  success  of  this  invention,  has  boldly  attempted 
to  deprive  me  of  the  '  entire  invention.'  " 

Mr.  Palmer  replied,  under  date  of  March  5th,  1839,  and,  among 
other  things,  said  :  — 


70 


"  I  pefectly  recollect  your  describing  to  myself  and  other  of  our 
fellow-passengers  on  board  the  Sully,  during  her  homeward  passage 
from  Havre  to  New  York,  in  1832,  an  electric  telegraph,  which 
you  stated  you  had  invented,  or  which  had  occurred  to  you  since 
your  being  on  board. 

"  It  was  certainly  new  to  me,  and  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge 
and  belief  was  so  also  to  the  rest  of  our  fellow-passengers ;  for 
(if  my  memory  does  not  betray  me)  no  one  at  that  time  claimed  a 
priority  of  invention  in  your  method  of  applying  the  electric  fluid 
to  the  conveying  of  dispatches.  I  certainly  did  understand  at  the 
time  that  you  intended  to  perfect  this  invention,  which  you  con- 
sidered your  own,  and  to  obtain  a  patent  for  it." 

Mr.  Fisher,  in  reply  to  Dr.  Jackson's  letter  of  June  6th,  1847, 
among  other  things,  said  :  — 

"Whoever  first  started  the  idea,  he  (Morse)  at  once  embraced 
it,  and  by  dint  of  his  inquiries,  and  b}r  the  aid  he  solicited  from 
others,  was  able  to  carry  it  to  perfection.  Without  your  assist- 
ance, or  that  of  others  equally  accomplished  in  the  sciences,  he 
in  all  probability  would  have  been  unable  to  proceed,  but  would 
have  ridden  it  as  a  hobby-horse  with  as  little  progress  as  an  in- 
fant in  his.  But  the  praise  must  be  his,  of  seeking,  wherever  he 
could  find  it,  the  science  and  mechanical  skill  which  previously  he 
had  not,  and  using  them  in  prosecuting  his  favorite  scheme." 

Mr.  Fisher  was  required  to  give  his  deposition  in  the  Kentucky 
case  of  Morse  et  al.  vs.  O'Reilly  et  al.,  and  on  that  occasion  stated 
under  oath  that  he  wrote  the  letters  to  Professor  Morse,  above 
quoted,  dated  September  21  and  November  17,  1837 ;  that  he 
"  then  believed,  and  still  believes  the  matters  therein  stated  to  be 
true  ;  that  neither  Dr.  Jackson  nor  any  other  passenger,  except 
Professor  Morse,  was  engaged  on  board  of  that  ship  in  planning 
or  devising  any  machine  or  telegraphic  instrument,  or  the  mode 
of  communicating  intelligence  by  telegraph ; "  that  "  Professor 
Morse's  mind,  and  his  only,  seemed  to  be  engaged  in  that  subject, 
and  that  intensely  ; "  that  Dr.  Jackson  did  not,  to  his  recollection, 
"  onboard  of  the  packet-ship  Sully,  or  elsewhere,  give  any  minute 
or  any  description  of  the  appropriate,  or  of  any  means,  or  of  any 
instrument,  by  which  news  might  be  communicated  by  galvanic 
electricity,  or  by  electro-magnetic  machinery  ;  "  that,  to  "  the  best 


71 


of  his  recollection,  Dr.  Jackson  did  not,  on  board  the  Sully,  de- 
scribe any  mode  of  telegraph  communication."  In  fine,  nothing 
could  be  more  directly  confirmed  than  Morse's  claim  is  by  this 
deposition. 

In  his  deposition  in  the  same  suit,  Captain  Pell  states  on  oath 
that  he  "  believed,  and  still  believes,  that  the  matters  stated  by 
him,  in  his  letters  to  Professor  Morse,  dated  on  the  27th  Septem- 
ber, 1837,  and  1st  February,  1839,  to  be  true  ; "  that  he  "  does  not 
know  any  other  passenger  or  person  who  returned  with  Professor 
Morse,  on  board  the  ship  Sully,  in  October,  1832,  who  discovered, 
or  invented,  or  who  communicated  the  discovery  or  invention  of  an 
Electric  Telegraph,  claimed  to  have  been  discovered  by  Professor 
Morse ; "  that,  during  the  passage,  "  he  did  not  hear,  nor  did  he 
understand,  that  any  other  person  on  board  the  said  ship,  except 
said  Morse,  pretended  to  claim  to  have  made  said  discovery ; " 
that  neither  Dr.  Jackson,  nor  any  other  passenger  except  Morse, 
to  his  knowledge,  "  m^ide  any  claim  in  regard  to  the  matter,  as 
being  the  inventor,  or  as  having  any  part  in  it,  or  as  taking  any 
such  part  or  prominence  in  the  said  discussions  as  would  make  him 
out  as  a  participator  in  the  invention  ;  "  that  "  he  always  has  be- 
lieved, and  still  does  believe,  that  Professor  Morse  was  the  first 
person,  and  the  only  person  on  board  the  packet-ship  Sully,  who 
suggested  the  Electric  Telegraph,  and  that  he  alone  among  the 
passengers  brought  it  to  its  maturity." 

And  the  Hon.  W.  C.  Rives,  at  present  Minister  to  France,  de- 
clared, on  the  eve  of  his  departure,  that  he  was  ready,  on  any 
proper  occasion,  to  confirm  on  oath  the  truth  of  his  letters  to  Pro- 
fessor Morse,  dated  September  21st  1837,  and  March  1st,  1838. 

Dr.  Jackson  answered  the  circular  letter  of  Professor  Morse  on 
September  10th,  1837,  in  which  he  claimed  to  be  mutual  inventor 
of  the  telegraph,  and  says,  among  other  things:  "In  the  appli- 
cation of  the  electro-magnet  I  had  proposed  to  mark  in  actual  type, 
having  a  packet  of  twenty-four  wires  for  the  conductors  to  the 
several  magnets,  each  of  which  moved  a  letter  and  pressed  with 
great  power."  He  says,  "  I  have  drawings  of  several  instru- 
ments, and  hope  next  winter  to  make  public  trials  of  the  experi- 
ments, and  shall  not  publish  anything  until  the  work  is  done  and 


72 


perfected."  .  .  .  "I  suppose  that  the  reason  why  my  name 
was  not  attached  to  the  invention  of  the  electric  telegraph  is  sim- 
ply that  the  editor  did  not  know  that  the  invention  was  our 
mutual  discovery.  I  trust  you  will  take  care  that  the  proper  share 
of  credit  shall  be  given  me  when  you  make  public  all  your  doings." 
To  this  Professor  Morse  replies  :  — 

"New  York  City  University,  September  18,  1837. 
"  To  Dr.  Charles  T.  Jackson  :  — 

"  My  Dear  Sir,  —  Yours,  of  the  10th  instant,  from  Bangor,  I  have 
received,  and  I  lose  no  time  in  endeavoring  to  disabuse  your  mind 
of  an  error  into  which  it  has  fallen  in  regard  to  the  electro-magnetic 
telegraph.  You  speak  of  it  as  '  our  electric  telegraph,'  and  as  '  a 
mutual  discovery.'  I  am  persuaded  that  when  you  shall  recall  the 
circumstances  as  they  occurred  on  board  the  ship,  and  shall  also  be 
informed  of  the  nature  of  the  invention  of  which  I  claim  to  be  the 
sole  and  original  inventor,  you  will  no  longer  be  surprised  that 
your  name  was  not  connected  with  mine  in  the  late  announcement 
of  the  invention.  I  have  a  distinct  recollection  of  the  manner,  the 
place,  and  the  moment  when  the  thought  of  making  an  electric  wire 
the  means  of  communicating  intelligence  first  came  into  nry  mind 
and  was  uttered.  It  was  at  the  table  in  the  cabin,  just  after  we 
had 'completed  the  usual  repast  at  mid-day  ;  you  were  upon  one  side 
of  the  table,  and  I  upon  the  other.  We  were  conversing  on  the 
recent  scientific  discoveries  in  Electro-Magnetism,  and  the  experi- 
ments of  Ampere  with  the  Electro-Magnet ;  you  were  describing 
the  length  of  wire  in  the  coil  of  a  magnet,  and  the  question  was 
asked  by  one  of  the  passengers  if  the  electricity  was  not  retarded 
by  the  length  of  wire.  You  replied,  no  ;  that  electricity  passed 
instantaneously  over  any  known  length  of  wire,  and  you  then  al- 
luded in  proof  to  the  experiment  by  Dr.  Franklin,  who  had  made 
manymiles  in  circuit  near  (London)  Philadelphia,  to  ascertain  the 
velocity  of  electricity,  but  could  observe  no  difference  of  time  be- 
tween the  touch  at  one  extremity  and  the  spark  at  the  other.  I 
then  remarked,  this  being  so,  if  the  presence  of  electricity  can  be 
made  visible  in  any  desired  part  of  the  circuit,  I  see  no  reason  why 
intelligence  might  no  be  transmitted  instantaneously  by  electri- 
city.    You  gave  your  assent  that  it  was  possible.     The  conversation 


73 


was  not  diverted  by  this  remark  of  mine  from  the  details  of  the 
experiment  yon  were  describing,  which  was  the  obtaining  of  a  spark 
from  a  magnet,  nor  was  this  thought  of  the  telegraph  again  men- 
tioned, until  I  introduced  the  subject  the  next  day.  While  your 
own  mind  was,  during  the  voyage,  more  occupied  with  other 
branches  of  science,  geology  and  anatomy,  the  thought  which  I  had 
conceived  took  firm  possession  of  my  mind,  and,  as  you  well  know, 
occupied  the  wakeful  hours  of  the  night ;  for  I  used  to  report 
occasionally  to  you  and  to  several  of  the  other  passengers  my 
progress,  and  to  ask  you  questions  in  regard  to  the  best  mode 
of  ascertaining  the  presence  of  electricity.  I  had  devised  a 
system  of  signs  and  constructed  a  species  of  type,  which  I  drew 
out  in  my  sketch-book,  by  which  to  regulate  the  passage  of 
electricity,  but  I  had  not  settled  the  best  mode  of  causing  the 
electricity  to  mark.  Several  methods  suggested  themselves  to 
me,  such  as  causing  a  puncture  to  be  made  in  a  paper  by  the  pas- 
sage of  a  spark  between  two  disconnected  parts,  etc.,  which  I 
soon  discarded  as  impracticable.  I  asked  you  if  there  was  not 
some  mode  of  decomposition  which  could  be  turned  to  account. 
You  suggested  the  following  experiment,  which  we  agreed  should 
be  tried  together,  if  we  could  meet  for  that  purpose.  It  was  this  : 
to  decompose,  by  the  electricity,  glauber  salts  upon  the  paper, 
which  was  first  to  be  covered  with  turmeric.  This  to  me  seemed  so 
simple  and  easy  a  mode  that  I  fell  in  with  the  idea,  and  we  agreed 
to  try  this  experiment  as  soon  as  possible  after  our  landing.  In 
my  occasional  visits  to  Boston,  since  my  return  from  Europe,  I 
have  always  endeavored  to  see  you,  and  never  saw  you,  as  you 
well  know,  without  introducing  the  subject  of  the  telegraph,  and 
expressing  a  wish  that  the  experiment  we  had  talked  of  might  be 
tried.  You  were  always  otherwise  busily  and  necessarily  engaged, 
and  the  experiment  was  never  tried.  I  really  do  not  see  the 
ground  of  your  claim  to  be  a  mutual  discoverer,  even  if  we  had 
tried  the  experiment  proposed,  and  it  had  been  successful.  This 
fact  would  not  have  constituted  you  a  mutual  discoverer,  but  it 
might  have  made  you  a  partner,  in  a  certain  sense,  of  the  inven- 
tion. The  discovery  is  the  original  suggestion  of  conveying  intel- 
igence  by  electricity.  The  invention  is  devising  the  mode  of  con- 
veying  it.      The   discovery,  so  far   as  we   alone   are  concerned, 


74 

belongs  to  me,  and  it  must  of  necessity  belong  exclusively  to  me ; 
and  if,  by  an  experiment  which  we  proposed  to  try  together,  we 
had  mutually  fixed  upon  a  successful  mode  of  conveying  intelli- 
gence, then  might  we  with  some  propriety  be  termed  mutual  or 
joint  inventors.  But  as  we  have  neither  tried  any  experiment 
together,  nor  has  the  one  proposed  to  be  tried  by  you  been 
adopted  by  me,  I  cannot  see  how  we  can  be  called  mutual  invent- 
ors. You  are  not  aware,  perhaps,  that  the  mode  I  have  carried 
into  effect,  after  many  and  various  experiments,  with  the  assistance 
of  rny  colleague,  Professor  Gale,  was  never  mentioned,  either  by 
you  or  to  you.  The  plan  of  marking  by  m}'  peculiar  type,  and  the 
use  which  I  make  of  the  electro-magnet,  was  entirely  original  with 
me ;  all  the  machinery  has  been  elaborated  without  a  hint  from 
you  of  any  kind,  in  the  remotest  degree.  I  am  the  sole  inventor ; 
indeed,  had  you  been  aware  of  these  facts,  I  am  sure  you  would 
not  have  preferred  a  claim  to  be  co-inventor  in  an  instrument 
wholly  mine.  You  say,  '  I  trust  that  you  will  take  care  that  the 
proper  share  of  credit  shall  be  given  to  me  when  you  make  public 
your  doings.'  This  I  have  always  done,  and  with  pleasure.  I 
have  always  given  you  credit  for  great  genius  and  acquirements, 
and  have  always  said,  in  giving  my  account  of  my  telegraph,  that 
it  was  on  board  the  ship,  during  a  scientific  conversation  with  you, 
that  I  first  conceived  the  thought  of  an  electric  telegraph.  Is 
there  really  any  more  you  will  claim,  or  that  I  could  in  truth  or 
justice  give?  I  have  acknowledgments  of  similar  kinds  to  make 
to  Professor  Silliman  and  Professor  Gale,  to  the  former  of  whom  I 
am  under  the  same  obligations,  in  kind  and  degree,  as  to  yourself; 
and  to  the  latter  I  am  most  of  all  indebted  for  substantial  and 
effective  aid  in  many  of  my  experiments.  If  any  one  has  a  claim 
to  be  mutual  inventor  on  the  score  of  aid  by  hints,  it  is  Professor 
Gale  ;  but  he  prefers  no  claim  of  the  kind.  I  certainly  have  no 
cause  to  complain  because  you  were  never  at  leisure,  when  I  was 
in  Boston,  to  try  the  experiment  which  we  agreed  together  to  try  ; 
but  you  will  see  in  a  moment  that  I  should  have  just  reason  to 
complain  if,  after  repeated  disappointments  in  this  respect,  and 
after  having  availed  myself  of  a  different  method,  one  entirely  my 


75 


own,  to  carry  into  effect  my  original  invention,  you  should  prefer 
a  claim  to  partnership  in  it,  because  we  had  once  conferred  together 
on  an  experiment  never  tried." 

"  Believe  me,  dear  sir, 

"  Truly  your  friend  and  servant, 

"SAMUEL  F.  B.   MORSE." 


Dr.  Jackson's  Ansiuer. 

"Boston,  November  7,  1837. 
"  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse  :  — 

"  My  Dear  Sir, 

I  will  confine  my  remarks  to  the  invention  made  on  board  the 
Sully.  You  say  that  you  '  have  a  distinct  recollection  of  the  man- 
ner, time,  and  place,  and  the  moment  when  the  thought  of  making 
an  electric  wire  the  means  of  communicating  intelligence  first  came 
into  your  mind  and  was  uttered.'  If  you  have  this  vivid  recol- 
lection, you  cannot  refuse  your  assent  to  the  following  remarks,  for 
I  remember  too,  and  am  happily  endowed  with  a  strong  and  reten- 
tive memory  as  to  the  facts.  In  the  first  place,  you  will  acknowl- 
edge that  you  were  at  that  time  wholly  unacquainted  with  the 
history  and  management  of  electricity  and  electro-magnetism, 
while  I  was  perfectly  familiar  with  the  subject,  it  having  been  one 
of  my  favorite  studies  from  boyhood  to  the  present  hour,  and  I 
had  enjoyed  every  possible  advantage  in  acquiring  a  full  knowledge 
of  the  subject  during  my  studies  in  the  scientific  schools  of  Paris 
and  elsewhere.  Now,  in  what  manner  did  the  discovery  and 
invention  arise,  and  to  whom  are  the  suggestions  due?  I  was 
enthusiastically  describing  the  curious  and  wonderful  properties  of 
electricity  and  electro-magnetism  before  yourself,  Mr.  Eives,  Mr. 
Fisher,  and  others,  at  the  table  after  dinner,  while  the  company  were 
all  listeners,  and,  as  appeared  to  me, 'were  somewhat  incredulous, 
they  knowing  little  or  nothing  of  the  subject.  I  mentioned,  among 
other  things,  that  I  had  seen  the  electric  spark  pass  instantaneously, 
without  any  appreciable  loss  of  time,  four  hundred  times  around 
the  great  lecture-room  of  the  Sorbonne.    This  evidently  surprised 


76 

the  company,  and  I  then  asked  if  they  had  not  read  of  Dr.  Frank- 
lin's experiment,  in  which  he  caused  electricity  to  go  a  journey  of 
twenty  miles  by  means  of  a  wire  stretched  up  the  Thames,  the 
water  being  made  a  portion  of  the  circuit? 

"The  answer  was,  from  yourself,  that  you  had  not  read  it.  After 
a  short  discussion  as  to  the  instantaneous  nature  of  the  passage, 
one  of  the  party,  either  Mr.  Rives  or  Mr.  Fisher,  said  it  would  be 
well  if  we  could  send  news  in  the  same  rapid  manner ;  to  which 
you  replied,  '  Why  can't  we  ? '  I  then  proceeded  to  inform  you, 
in  answer  to  your  questions,  how  it  might  be  done  : — 

"  1st.  I  observed  that  electricity  might  be  made  visible  in  any 
part  of  the  circuit  by  dividing  the  wire,  when  a  spark  would  be 
seen  at  the  intersection. 

"  2d.  That  it  could  be  made  to  perforate  paper  if  interposed 
between  the  disconnected  wires. 

"  3d.  Saline  compounds  might  be  decomposed  so  as  to  produce 
colors  on  paper. 

"  The  second  and  third  projects  were  finally  adopted  for  a  future 
trial,  since  they  could  be  made  to  furnish  permanent  records. 
The  saline  substances  mentioned  were,  certain  salts  of  lead,  such 
as  the  acetate  and  carbonate,  which  an  interrupted  electro-galvanic 
current  would  decompose,  and  leave  a  black  mark  on  the  prepared 
paper. 

"  Next  turmeric  paper  was  to  be  dipped  in  a  neutral  salt,  say  sul- 
phate of  soda,  and  then  acted  upon  by  a  galvanic  current.  This 
would  produce  brown  marks,  from  the  presence  of  the  disengaged 
alkali.  Platina  points  were  proposed  to  effect  the  changes  of  color. 
"  You  then  questioned  me  again  on  every  point  of  the  conversa- 
tion, and  said  you  had  been  thinking  much  about  it,  and,  pencil  in 
hand,  proposed  a  method  of  deciphering  the  marking,  the  dots 
and  marks  being  made  regularly.  This  was  a  subject  of  discus- 
sion, and  we  both  took  part  in  it,  but  I  acknowledge  that  you  did 
most  in  planning  the  numeration  of  the  marks.  You  at  first  pro- 
posed 1,  2,  8,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  0,  and  subsequently  reduced  the 
number  to  five  figures  and  a  0.  Now,  as  to  the  invention,  I  beg 
leave  to  remark  that  I  knew  every  experiment  mentioned,  from 
my  own  frequent  practice  in  making  them.  It  was  to  me  no  un- 
wrought  problem,  but  a  matter  of  absolute  certainty.     I  was  not 


77 


making  conjectures,  but  repeating  the  facts  of  chemical  and  physi- 
cal science.  Hence,  since  I  have  performed  all  the  experiments, 
in  detail,  and  here  brought  together  for  a  special  purpose,  I  was, 
so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  the  true  inventor,  and  I  do  claim  to 
be  the  principal  in  the  whole  invention  made  on  board  the  Sully. 
It  rose  wholly  from  my  materials,  and  was  put  together  at  your 
request  by  me.  This  you  certainly  will  not  pretend  to  dispute.  I 
give  you  full  credit  for  your  ingenious  suggestions  as  to  the  divis- 
ions in  the  markings,  which  you  certainly  did  propose. 

"  You  will  not,  I  presume,  venture  to  maintain  that  you  at  that 
time  knew  anything  about  electro-magnetism,  more  than  what  you 
learned  from  me.  If  I  wanted  any  other  proof  beyond  your  own 
confession,  I  should  only  have  to  recall  to  mind  your  futile  at- 
tempt, after  your  arrival  in  New  York,  at  making  a  galvanic  bat- 
'tery,  and  the  plan  of  types,  levers,  etc.,  which  were  wholly 
impracticable,  and  demonstrated  to  me  that  you  did  not  under- 
stand the  subject. 

"  I  have  searched  the  archives  of  science,  and  find  that  the  first 
idea  of  such  an  instrument  was  conceived  by  Soemmering,  who 
proposed  an  electro-magnetic  telegraph.  Oersted,  of  Copenhagen, 
also  invented  one.  Ampere  says,  it  is  easy  to  construct  an  electro- 
magnetic telegraph.  See  Ampere,  Expose  des  Nouvelles  Decou- 
vertes  sur  l'Electricite  et  le  Magnetisme.     Paris,  1822,  page  71. 

"  The  discovery  is  not,  then,  to  be  claimed  by  us. 

*  "Most  respectfully  your  friend, 

"  C.  T.  JACKSON. 

"  P.  S.  I  did  not  read  this  in  Ampere  until  three  yeai*s  since, 
although  I  have  owned  the  book  since  1832,  and  when  I  saw  you 
last  I  forgot  to  mention  to  you  that  he  had  conceived  the  idea  of 
such  a  telegraph.  I  had  read  portions  of  the  book  before,  but  not 
that  section." 


78 


Professor  Morse's  Second  Rejoinder. 

"  New  York  City  University, 

"  Dec.  7,  1837. 
"  To  Dr.  Chas.  T.  Jackson  :  — 

"  Dear  Sir,  — 

Your  memory  and  mine  are  at  variance  in  regard  to  the  first 
suggestion  of  conveying  intelligence  by  electricity.  I  claim  to  be 
the  one  who  made  it,  and  in  the  way  which  I  stated  in  my  letter 
to  you.  You  acknowledge  that  the  suggestion  was  made  by  one  of 
the  company,  and  not  by  yourself,  and  so  doubtful  are  you  by  whom 
it  was  made,  that,  although  your  memory  serves  you  up  to  the 
point  of  giving  it  to  one  of  two  others  rather  than  to  me,  yet  your 
memory  then  fails,  and  you  do  not  know  which  of  the  two  it  was. 
Now,  sir,  it  was  neither  Mr.  Fisher  nor  Mr.  Rives  who  suggested 
that  thought.  I  suggested  it,  and  in  consequence  proceeded  to 
found  upon  it  my  whole  invention.  Had  not  the  thought  been  orig- 
inal with  me,  I  could  not  have  dwelt  upon  it  with  any  satisfaction. 
The  idea  that  I  had  made  a  brilliant  discovery,  that  it  was  original 
in  my  mind,  was  the  exciting  cause,  and  the  perpetual  stimulus  to 
urge  me  forward  in  maturing  it  to  a  result.  Had  I  supposed  at 
that  time  that  the  thought  had  ever  occurred  to  any  other  person, 
I  could  never  have  pursued  it ;  and  it  was  not  till  I  had  completed 
my  present  invention,  that  I  was  aware  that  the  thought  of  convey- 
ing intelligence  by  electricity  had  occurred  to  scientific  men  some 
years  before.  The  thought  was  suggested  to  my  mind  by  a  well- 
known  fact,  recalled  to  my  memory  in  your  account  of  a  magnetic 
experiment,  —  the  experiment  of  Franklin  on  the  velocity  of  elec- 
tricity. 

"After  having  given  my  suggestion  to  another,  you  make  me 
answer  it  by  asking  you, '  Why  can't  we  ?  '  and  to  this  question  you 
represent  yourself  as  having  immediately  given  a  methodical 
answer,  which  implies  that  the  whole  idea  of  an  electric  telegraph 
was  then  not  only  perfectly  familiar  with  you,  but  that  the  modes 
of  carrying  it  into  execution  were  also  as  familiar  as  any  common 
chemical  experiment.  Now,  if  your  memory  is  good,  you  must  e 
conscious  that  this  is  altogether  incorrect ;  that  it  is  impossk  le 
that  it  should  be  correct,  since  the  very  thought  was  new  to  all, 


79 


and  required  at  least  a  little  time  to  devise  modes  of  carrying  it 
into  effect.  You  must  be  sensible  that  my  suggestion  of  the  possi- 
bility of  conveying  intelligence  by  electricity  was  episodical ;  it 
did  not  change  the  current  of  }-our  remarks  from  electro-magnetism, 
upon  which  you  were  discoursing,  nor  did  you  make  a  remark  con- 
cerning a  telegraph,  until  I  called  3rour  attention  to  it  the  next 
day  ;  as  the  thought  was  suggested  by  me,  so  it  dwelt  in  rny  mind. 
I  cherished  it  as  an  antidote  to  ennui,  maturing  my  invention  prin- 
cipally in  the  sleepless  hours  of  the  night.  With  this  invention  I 
was  so  absorbed  that  I  thought  of  little  else,  and  I  was  in  the 
habit  of  reporting  progress  almost  daily  to  the  captain,  and  to 
several  of  the  other  passengers  beside  yourself.  To  you,  as  a  man 
in  whom  I  thought  I  could  confide,  I  more  especially  explained  my 
plan  of  numbers,  intervals,  types,  etc.,  and  the  machinery  for  using 
them. 

"  I  had  already  invented  these,  and  was  reviewing  in  my  mind  the 
various  modes  of  marking  at  least  ten  days  after  my  first  thinking 
of  the  subject,  when  I  consulted  you  to  ascertain  if  there  were  not 
some  substance  easily  decomposed  b^y  a  simple  contact  of  a  wire 
in  an  electric  state.  It  was  then,  and  not  till  then,  that  you  sug- 
gested turmeric  paper,  dipped  in  a  solution  of  sulphate  of  soda.  It 
was  then,  and  not  till  then,  that  you  took  any  interest  in  the  inven- 
tion. I  proposed  to  you  to  try  this  experiment  with  me  when  we 
should  arrive  at  home,  and  here,  sir,  is  the  origin  of  your  error,  in 
thinking  yourself  entitled  on  this  account  to  be  a  co-inventor. 
This  experiment  we  were  to  try  together,  and  if  you  had  tried  it, 
and  had  otherwise  aided  me  in  the  invention,  I  should  have  been 
willing  to  share  both  honors  and  profits  with  you.  But  you  very 
well  know  you  never  tried  this  nor  any  other  experiment  in  relation 
to  the  telegraph,  which  you  ever  reported  to  me. 

"  Thus  it  has  been  for  nearly  five  years.  You  must  be  aware,  too, 
that  while  you  considered  my  invention  as  impracticable,  you  did 
not  suggest  a  single  hint  of  any  other  mode  of  applying  it.  You 
spoke  of  my  invention  of  numerals,  intervals,  levers,  type,  etc., 
which  I  had  drawn  out  in  my  sketch-book,  as  ingenious,  but  im- 
practicable ;  indeed,  in  your  last  letter  you  assert  that  my  mode  of 
permanently  recording  is  impracticable,  and  that  you  corrected 


80 


my  errors.  How  you  corrected  my  errors,  you  don't  say,  nor  what 
mode  you  proposed  as  a  substitute.  If  you  did  propose  any,  you 
can  doubtless  tell  what  it  is. 

"  I  deny  that  I  am  indebted  to  you  for  any  single  hint  of  any 
kind  whatever  which  I  have  used  in  nay  invention. 

"  My  invention  on  board  the  Sully  is  mechanical  and  mathemati- 
cal ;  it  had  no  more  to  do  with  chemical  science  than  with  geology 
or  anatomy.  The  single  scientific  fact  ascertained  by  Franklin, 
that  electricity  can  be  made  to  travel  on  a  conductor  any  distance, 
instantaneously,  is  all  that  I  needed  to  know,  aside  from  mathe- 
matics and  mechanical  science,  in  order  to  plan  all  I  invented  on 
board  the  ship,  as  any  one  will  be  able  to  see  from  a  moment's  in- 
spection of  my  machinery,  as  there  planned.  This  machinery 
consisted  chiefly,  as  you  well  know,  of  a  system  of  signs,  which 
were  numerals,  to  be  read  by  intervals,  type,  and  apparatus  to 
arrange  the  numbers  for  transmission,  a  lever  to  mark  on  the  regis- 
ter by  closing  and  breaking  the  circuit,  and  a  register  moving  by 
clock  machinery  to  receive  the  marks  at  the  proper  time.  So  much 
of  the  invention,  at  least,  you  veiy  properly  concede  to  me. 

"  The  apparatus  which  I  invented  on  board  the  Sully  was  grad- 
ually matured,  and  was  constructed  for  and  adapted  to  the  use  of 
one  wire,  or  a  single  circuit.  Now,  this  you  have  often  asserted 
to  me  to  be  impracticable  ;  and,  although  you  never  devised,  to  my 
knowledge,  any  other  method,  until  I  informed  you  of  mine  with 
an  electro-magnet,  you  now  talk  in  your  letters  of  using  twenty- 
four  wires  and  twenty-four  magnets,  and  of  marking  in  real  type. 
Now,  what  have  these  to  do  with  my  invention  on  the  Sully  1  The 
use  of  twenty-four  wires  was  probably  adopted  by  you  from  a  hint 
of  mine  in  the  very  outset,  for  it  was  my  first  and  most  natural 
thought ;  but  having  devised  what  I  considered  a  much  more  sim- 
ple and  less  expensive  mode,  to  wit,  using  one  wire,  I  almost 
immediately  relinquished  the  first  for  my  new  mode ;  whether  you 
derived  the  hint  from  me  or  not  is  to  me  of  little  consequence,  for, 
provided  you  use  nothing  that  was  invented  by  me,  upon  the  packet 
of  twenty-four  wires,  you  are  at  liberty  to  use  them  as  you  please. 
If  you  have  invented  a  telegraph  of  twenty-four  wires,  and  a  mode 


81 

of  marking  in  '  real  type,'  why  do  you  claim  to  be  a  mutual  inven- 
tor of  mine,  which  is  adapted  to  one  wire  or  a  single  circuit,  and 
which  you  at  the  same  time  pronounce  '  impracticable '  ?  Your 
claim  to  any  share  in  my  impracticable  mode,  is,  to  say  the  least, 
very  singular.  Unfortunately  for  the  sustainment  of  your  claim, 
the  plan  which  I  devised  on  board  the  ship,  the  plan  of  numerals, 
types,  lines,  etc.,  which  you  pronounce  wholly  impracticable,  and 
the  use  of  one  wire  or  a  single  circuit  which  you  pronounce  im 
practicable,  is  the  only  plan  I  have  now  in  successful  operation. 


"  Your  most  obedient  servant, 

"SAMUEL  F.  B.  MORSE." 

Kendall's  "Full  Exposure"  etc.,  1850. 

From  these  letters  and  from  depositions  in  substantial  accord 
with  them,  the  incidents  that  occurred  on  board  the  Sully  and 
subsequently,  specially  bearing  upon  the  invention  of  the  tele- 
graph, may  be  thus  stated. 

In  an  after-dinner  conversation  among  the  cabin  passengers  and 
chief  officer  of  the  packet  ship,  the  subject  of  the  recent  discovery 
by  Faraday  of  the  means  of  obtaining  a  spark  from  a  magnet,  and 
the  great  facts  of  electro-magnetism  and  magneto-electricity  were 
introduced.  Dr.  Jackson  entertained  the  company  with  an  enthusi- 
astic account  of  experiments  he  had  witnessed  in  Paris,  among  the 
rest  mentioning  as  an  illustration  of  the  great  velocity  of  the  electric 
current,  its  transmission  four  hundred  times  around  the  hall  of  the 
Sorbonne  without  the  consumption  of  appreciable  time.  At  this 
point  the  brilliant  thought  occurs  to  Professor  Morse,  to  which  he 
gives  expression,  that  this  agent  might  be  employed  to  convey 
intelligence  through  great  distances.  Dr.  Jackson  responds  that 
there  is  no  doubt  about  it,  and  resumes  his  account  of  experi- 
ments he  had  witnessed,  not  further  disturbed  by  the  interjectional 
remark  of  Professor  Morse.  Nothing  was  said  of  a  telegraph  by 
any  one. 

11 


82 

Now,  the  next  morning,  Professor  Morse  mentions  to  Dr.  Jack- 
son that  he  had  been  occupied  much  of  the  night  with  the  idea  of 
an  electric  telegraph. 

In  the  conversation  that  followed  it  may  be  assumed  that  the 
three  methods  mentioned  by  Dr.  Jackson  in  his  letter  of  Nov.  7, 
1837,  were  discussed  between  them.  Professor  Morse  remembers 
to  have  mentioned  one  of  them.  As  given  by  Dr.  Jackson  they 
are  as  follows  :  ■ — 

"1st.  I  observed  that  electricity  might  be  made  visible  in  any 
part  of  the  circuit,  by  dividing  the  wire,  when  a  spark  would  be 
seen  at  the  intersection. 

"  2d.  That  it  could  be  made  to  perforate  paper  if  interposed 
between  the  disconnected  wires. 

"  3d.  Saline  compounds  might  be  decomposed,  so  as  to  pro- 
duce colors  on  paper." 

If  we  now  turn  to  Enfield's  Institutes  of  Natural  Philosophy,  the 
text-book  which  was  experimentally  illustrated  by  Professor  Day 
at  Yale  College  when  Professor  Morse  was  an  undergraduate, 
published  in  1802,  in  proposition  XXI.,  chap.  5,  book  1,  we  find 
the  following :  — 

"  If  the  circuit  be  interrupted,  the  fluid  will  become  visible,  and 
when  it  passes  it  will  leave  an  impression  upon  any  intermediate 
body. 

"Exp.  1.  Let  the  fluid  pass  through  a  chain  or  through  any 
metallic  bodies  placed  at  small  distances  from  each  other.  The 
fluid  will  be  visible  between  the  links  of  the  chain  or  between 
metallic  bodies. 

"  Exp.  2.  If  the  circuit  be  interrupted  by  several  folds  of 
paper,  a  perforation  will  be  made  through  it,  and  each  of  the 
leaves  will  be  protruded  by  the  strokes  from  the  middle  to  the 
outward  leaves. 

"  Exp.  3.  Let  a  card  "  (cards  are  usually  glazed  with  a  prepara- 
tion of  lead  salts)  "  be  placed  under  wires  which  form  the  circuit, 
when  the  circuit  is  interrupted  for  the  space  of  an  inch,  the  card  will 
be  discolored.  Cavallo  says,  cards  glazed  with  white  lead  were 
marked  by  a  long  black  track." 

It  will  be  seen  on  comparison  that  the  three  methods  given  in  the 
one  are  but  the  transcript  of  the  three  classes  of  experiments  in 


83 

the  other,  and  that  they  involve  the  application  of  Motional 
electricity  only.  They  were  mentioned  by  Cavallo  and  Lullin 
in  the  last  century,  and  Reusser  applied,  in  1794,  the  principle 
illustrated  in  the  first  experiment  of  Enfield,  in  his  plan  of  the 
electric-telegraph  already  referred  to,  and  Boeckman  applied  the 
method  of  counting  the  sparks  in  his  plan  of  an  electric-telegraph, 
in  1795. 

Now,  following  this  interview,  several  days  elapsed,  during 
which,  up  to  this  time,  if  credit  was  really  due  to  anybody, 
it  was  to  the  author  of  the  interjectional  remark  suggesting  the 
use  of  electricity  for  the  conveyance  of  intelligence,  and  he  was 
Professor  Morse.  Both  Morse  and  Jackson  (see  Jackson's  letter 
supra)  seem  at  this  time  to  have  been  ignorant  that  this  use  of 
electricity,  either  frictional  or  voltaic,  had  ever  before  been  made  by 
any  one. 

Professor  Morse  at  the  outset  conceived  the  mathematical  and 
mechanical  elements  of  his  method  of  recording.  After  some  ten 
days  from  the  first  conversation  at  the  dinner-table,  Professor 
Morse  asked  Dr.  Jackson  if  he  knew  of  a  chemical  preparation  with 
which  paper  might  be  saturated,  and  which  the  electric  current 
would  decompose,  leaving  a  permanent  discoloration  of  the  paper. 
Dr.  Jackson  replied  with  the  suggestion  that  paper  might  be 
saturated  with  sulphate  of  soda  and  turmeric  which,  on  the  electric 
spark  passing  from  one  platinum  point  to  another  through  the 
paper,  would,  by  decomposition  of  the  sulphate  of  soda,  setting 
the  soda  free,  color  the  turmeric  brown.  It  was  agreed  that  an 
experiment  should  be  made  to  ascertain  whether  this  preparation 
would  yield  the  desired  permanent  discoloration.  Professor 
Morse,  at  the  time,  explained  to  Dr.  Jackson  his  method  of  so 
interrupting  the  electric  current  as  to  produce  dots,  lines  and 
spaces  at  measured  and  determined  intervals,  which  should  stand 
for  numerals,  and  which  developed  into  the  alphabet. 

It  was  in  memory  of  the  incidents  of  this  interview  that  Dr. 
Jackson  wrote,  following  the  three  methods  given  above :  — 

"  The  second  and  third  projects  were  finally  adopted  for  future 
trial  since  they  could  be  made  to  furnish  permanent  records.  The 
saline  substances  mentioned  were  certain  salts  of  lead,  such  as  the 
acetate  and  carbonate,  which  an  interrupted  galvanic  current  would 


84 

decompose  and  leave  a  black  mark  on  the  paper.  Next  turmeric 
paper  was  to  be  dipped  in  a  neutral  salt,  say  sulphate  of  soda, 
and  then  acted  upon  by  the  galvanic  current.  This  would  pro- 
duce brown  marks  from  presence  of  free  disengaged  alkali. 
Platina  points  were  proposed  to  effect  the  changes  in  color.  I 
then  observed  that  it  would  be  easy  to  devise  a  method  of  read- 
ing the  markings. 

"  Here  the  conversation  changed  for  a  while,  and  was  resumed 
by  you  the  next  day  after  breakfast.  You  then  questioned  me 
again  on  every  point  of  the  invention,  and  said  that  you  had  been 
thinking  much  about  it,  and,  pencil  in  hand,  proposed  a  method 
of  deciphering  the  markings,  the  dots  and  marks  being  made 
regularly. 

"  This  was  a  subject  of  discussion,  and  we  both  took  part  in  it, 
but  I  acknowledge  that  you  did  most  in  planning  the  numeration 
of  the  marks.  You  at  first  proposed  1,  2,  3,4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  0, 
and  subsequently  reduced  the  number  to  five  figures  and  a  0." 
.  .  .  "  I  give  you  full  credit  for  your  ingenious  suggestions 
as  to  the  divisions  in  the  markings,  which  you  certainly  did 
propose." 

This  method  so  far  conceived  was  manifestly  at  the  best  a  plan 
for  a  purely  electro-chemical  telegraph,  and  in  no  sense  whatever 
an  electro-ma^weta'c  telegraph.  The  experiments  which  were  to 
have  been  made  were  never  carried  out,  and  the  invention,  so  far 
as  Morse  was  concerned,  was  never  brought  into  successful  opera- 
tion. 

The  electro-MAGNETIO  telegraph,  which  Morse  also  conceived, 
and  the  devices  for  which  he  elaborated  and  committed  to  paper  on 
board  the  Sully,  was  in  the  course  of  the  voyage  shown  to  the 
various  passengers,  and  among  the  rest  to  Dr.  Jackson,  and  con- 
demned by  him  as  impracticable,  in  the  following  terms.  (See 
letter  above  cited.) 

.  .  .  "I  should  only  have  to  recall  your  futile  attempt  after 
your  arrival  in  New  York,  at  making  a  galvanic  battery,  and  the 
plan  of  types,  levers,  etc.,  which  were  wholly  impracticable,  and 
demonstrated  to  me  that  you  did  not  understand  the  subject." 

This  invention,  thus  admitted  to  be  Morse's,  and  denounced  by 
Jackson,  was  the  ultimately  successful  Morse  recording  telegraph. 


85 

In  conclusion,  in  view  of  the  whole  literature  on  the  claim 
of  Dr.  Jackson,  it  may  be  said  that  but  for  the  after-dinner  con- 
versation on  the  Sully,  the  Morse  recording  telegraph  would  not, 
in  all  probability,  have  been  invented  on  this  voyage.  It  may 
perhaps  be  further  said  that  but  for  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
Dr.  Jackson  described  the  brilliant  experiments  he  had  witnessed, 
Morse's  telegraph  might  have  been,  probably  would  have  been, 
delayed  —  possibly  never  have  been  conceived.  But  it  is  impos- 
sible to  admit,  after  Morse's  first  suggestive  inquiry,  that  the  re- 
calling in  a  subsequent  conversation  of  the  familiar  experiments 
with  factional  electricity  mentioned  in  Enfield's  Philosophy, — 
assuming  them  to  have  been  reproduced  wholly  from  Jackson's 
memory,  which  is  not  the  fact,  —  could  fairly  be  said  to  contain 
the  suggestion  of  the  Morse  recording  telegraph.  Jackson  con- 
cedes substantially  the  invention  of  the  alphabet  to  Morse,  and  it 
is  not  fair  to  award  a  share  in  this  invention,  because  in  response 
at  a  still  later  period  to  an  inquiry  of  Professor  Morse  for  a  chem- 
ical preparation,  sensitive  to  change  in  color  under  the  decom- 
posing effect  of  electricity,  he  should  have  named  a  preparation 
which  subsequent  experiment  proved  to  be  without  value  for  the 
purpose  required.  Nor  is  it  proper  that  Jackson  should  share  in 
the  credit  of  the  successful  development  of  the  electro-magnetic 
telegraph  (involving  this  alphabet),  the  practicability  of  which  he 
takes  credit  to  himself  for  having  denounced  at  the  time  of  its 
description  to  him  by  Professor  Morse. 

It  may,  however,  be  fairly  credited  to  Dr.  Jackson  that  in  the 
conversation  on  the  Sully  he  was  instrumental,  as  a  lecture,  or  the 
perusal  of  a  brilliant  article  in  a  journal  might  have  been,  in 
awakening  a  train  of  thought  in  the  mind  of  Professor  Morse 
that  has  been  fruitful  in  services  to  civilization,  with  which  any 
one  may  be  gratified  to  be  justly  connected. 


APPENDIX  C. 


The  originality  of  Professor  Morse,  as  the  inventor  of  the  subjects 
claimed  in  this  patent  of  1840. 

St.  George  T.  Campbell,  in  his  argument  before  the  Supreme 
Court,  1852,  remarks  as  follows  :  — 

"  The  investigation  of  this  subject  is  one  of  immense  scope.  It 
has  been  four  times  judicially  examined  by  the  courts  of  the  United 
States,  and  four  times  by  the  Patent  Office,  and  in  every  instance 
decided  in  favor  of  Morse." 

Morse's  originality  was  investigated  by  the  Commissioner  of 
Patents  when  he  issued  this  patent  in  1840,  when  he  reissued  the 
patent  in  1846,  and  when  he  reissued  it  again  in  1848.  It  was 
reported  upon  by  the  Examiner  in  the  present  application.  Judge 
Woodbury,  at  Boston,  Judge  Munroe,  in  Kentucky,  Judges  Grier 
and  Kane,  at  Philadelphia,  and  finally  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  have  investigated  it.  Seldom  has  a  question  of  fact 
been  more  thoroughly  weighed. 

The  conclusion  to  which  commissioners,  examiners,  and  justices 
have  arrived,  may  be  briefly  summed  up  in  the  language  of 

I 

Chief  Justice  Taney,  in  expressing  the  unanimous  opinion  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  on  this  point. 

"  "Waiving,  for  the  present,  any  remarks  upon  the  identity  or 
similitude  of  these  inventions,  the  Court  is  of  opinion  that  the  first 
branch  of  the  objection  cannot  be  maintained,  and  that  Morse  was 
the  first  and  original  inventor  of  the  telegraph  described  in  his 
specification,  and  preceded  the  three  European  inventions  relied  on 
by  the  defendants. 

"  The  evidence  is  full  and  clear  that  when  he  was  returning  from 
a  visit  to  Europe,  in  1832,  he  was  deeply  engaged  upon  this  sub- 
ject during  the  voyage ;  and  that  the  process  and  means  were  so 


far  developed  and  arranged  in  his  own  mind,  that  he  was  confident 
of  ultimate  success.     It  is  in  proof  that  he  pursued  these  investi- 
gations with  unremitting  ardor  and  industry,  interrupted  occasion- 
ally by  pecuniary  embarrassments  ;  and  we  think  that  it  is  estab- 
lished by  the  testimony  of  Professor  G-ale  and  others,  that  early  in 
the  spring  of  1837  Morse  had  invented  his  plan  for  combining  two 
or  more  electric  or  galvanic  circuits,  with  independent  batteries, 
for  the  purpose  of  overcoming  the  diminished  force  of  electro-mag- 
netism in  long  circuits,  although  it  was  not  disclosed  to  the  witness 
until  afterwards  ;  and  that  there  is  reasonable  ground  for  believing 
that  he  had  so  far  completed  his  invention,  that  the  whole  process, 
combination,  powers,  and  machinery,  were  arranged  in  his  mind, 
and  that  the  delay  in  bringing  it  out  arose  from  his  want  of  means  ; 
for  it  required  the  highest  order  of  mechanical  skill  to  execute  and 
adjust  the  nice  and  delicate  work  necessary  to  put  the  telegraph 
into  operation,  and  the  slightest  error  or  defect  would  have  been 
fatal  to  its  success.    He  had  not  the  means  at  that  time  to  procure 
the  aid  of  workmen  of  that  character ;  and  without  their  aid  no 
model  could  be  prepared  which  would  do  justice  to  his  invention ; 
and  it  moreover  required  a  large  sum  of  money  to  procure  proper 
materials  for  the  work.     He  however  filed  his  caveat  on  the  6th  of 
October,  1837,  and  on  the  7th  of  April,  1838,  applied  for  his  pa- 
tent, accompanying   his    application   with  a  specification  of  his 
invention,  and  describing  the  process  and  means  used  to  produce 
the  effect."    ........ 

"  With  this  evidence  before  us,  we  think  it  is  evident  that  the 
invention  of  Morse  was  prior  to  that  of  Steinheil,  Wheatstone  or 
Davy.  The  discovery  of  Steinheil,  taking  the  time  which  he  gave 
himself  to  the  French  Academy  of  Science,  cannot  be  understood 
as  carrying  it  back  beyond  the  months  of  May,  or  June,  1837,  and 
that  of  Wheatstone,  as  exhibited  to  Professors  Henry  and  Bache, 
goes  back  only  to  April  in  that  year.  And  there  is  nothing  in 
the  evidence  to  carry  back  the  invention  of  Davy  beyond  the  4th 
of  January,  1839,  when  his  specification  was  filed,  except  a  publi- 
cation said  to  have  been  made  in  the  London  Mechanic's  Maga- 
zine, January  20,  1838  ;  and  the  invention  of  Morse  is  justly 
entitled  to  take  date  from  early  in  the  spring  of  1837.  And  in 
the  description  of  Davy's  invention,  as  given  in  the  publication  of 


89 

January  20,  1838,  there  is  nothing  specified,  which  Morse  could 
have  borrowed  ;  and  we  have  no  evidence  to  show  that  his  inven- 
tion  ever  was  or  could  be  carried  into  successful  operation. 

"Now  we  suppose  no  one  will  doubt  that  Morse  believed  him- 
self to  be  the  original  inventor  when  he  applied  for  his  patent,  in 
April,  1838.  Steinheil's  discovery  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
patented  uDtil  after  Morse's  application  for  a  patent,  nor  to  have 
been  patented  until  after  Morse's  previous  publication,  or  to  em- 
brace any  substantial  part  of  his  invention.  And  if  his  applica- 
tion for  a  patent  was  made  under  such  circumstances,  the  patent  is 
good,  even  if  in  point  of  fact  he  was  not  the  first  inventor. 

"  In  this  view  of  the  subject,  it  is  unnecessary  to  compare  the 
telegraph  of  Morse  with  these  European  inventions  to  ascertain 
whether  they  are  substantially  the  same  or  not.  If  they  were  the 
same  in  every  particular,  it  would  not  impair  his  rights.  But  it  is 
impossible  to  examine  them,  and  look  at  the  process  and  the  ma- 
chinery and  results  of  each,  so  far  as  the  facts  are  before  us,  with- 
out perceiving  at  once  the  substantial  and  essential  difference 
between  them,  and  the  decided  superiority  of  the  one  invented  by 
Professor  Morse. 

"  Neither  can  the  inquiries  he  made,  nor  the  information  or  ad- 
vice he  received  from  men  of  science  in  the  course  of  his  researches, 
impair  His  right  to  the  character  of  an  inventor.  No  invention 
can  possibly  be  made,  consisting  of  a  combination  of  different  ele- 
ments of  power,  without  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  proper- 
ties of  each  of  them,  and  the  mode  in  which  they  operate  on  each 
other.  And  it  can  make  no  difference  in  this  respect  whether  he 
derived  his  information  from  books  or  from  conversation  with  men 
skilled  in  the  science. 

"  If  it  were  otherwise,  no  patent  in  which  a  combination  of  dif- 
ferent elements  is  used  could  ever  be  obtained.  For  no  man  ever 
made  such  an  invention  without  having  first  obtained  this  infor- 
mation, unless  it  was  discovered  by  some  fortunate  accident.  And 
it  is  evident  that  such  an  invention  as  the  electro-magnetic  tele- 
graph could  never  have  been  brought  into  action  without  it.  For 
a  very  high  degree  of  scientific  knowledge,  and  the  nicest  skill  in 
the  mechanic  arts,  were  combined  in  it,  and  were  both  necessary  to 
bring  it  into  successful  operation.  And  the  fact  that  Morse  sought 
12 


90 

and  obtained  the  necessary  information  and  counsel  from  the  best 
source,  and  acted  upon  it,  neither  impairs  his  rights  as  an  inven- 
tor, nor  detracts  from  his  merits." 

DICISION   OF   JUDGES    KANE   AND   GRIER. 

United  States  Circuit  Court,  District  of  Pennsylvania,  1851. 

The  trial  in  this  important  and  interesting  case  occurred  in 
Philadelphia,  in  September,  1851,  involving  important  questions 
relative  to  the  originality  of  the  inventions  claimed  by  Professor 
Samuel  F.  B.  Mor  se.  The  plaintiffs,  who  represent  the  Magnetic 
Telegraph  Company  using  Morse's  patents,  allege  that  the  defend- 
ants, who  represent  the  "Bain  Line"  from  Washington  to  New 
York,  have  violated  the  patents  granted  to  Morse. 

The  judges  on  the  bench  were  the  Hon.  B.  C.  Grier  and  Hon. 
J.  K.  Kane. 

On  the  3d  of  November,  Judge  Kane  delivered  the  opinion  of 
the  court,  Judge  Grier  expressing  his  concurrence  therein. 

Opinion  of  the  Court.  —  This  case  is  before  us  on  final  hearing 
upon  the  pleadings  and  proofs. 

Mr.  Morse's  patent  of  1840,  in  all  its  changes,  asserts  his  title 
to  two  distinct  patentable  subjects  ;  the  first,  founded  on  the  dis- 
covery of  a  new  art ;  the  second,  on  the  invention  of  the  means  of 
practising  it. 

That  he  was  the  first  to  devise  and  practise  the  art  of  recording 
language  at  telegraphic  distances,  by  the  dynamic  force  of  the 
electro-magnet,  or,  indeed,  by  any  agency  whatever,  is,  to  our 
minds,  plain  upon  all  the  evidence.  It  is  unnecessary  to  review  the 
testimony  for  the  purpose  of  showing  this.  His  application  for 
a  patent  in  April,  1838,  was  preceded  by  a  series  of  experiments, 
results,  illustrations,  and  proofs  of  final  success,  which  leave  no 
doubt  whatever  but  that  his  great  invention  was  consummated  be- 
fore the  early  spring  of  1837.  There  is  no  one  person,  whose  in- 
vention has  been  spoken  of  by  any  witness  referred  to  in  any 
book,  as  involving  the  principle  of  Mr.  Morse's  discovery,  but 
must  yield  precedence  of  date  to  this.  Neither  Steinheil,  nor 
Cooke  and  Wheatstone,  nor  Davy,  nor  Dyar,  nor  Henry,  had  at 


91 

this  time  made  a  recording  telegraph  of  any  sort.  The  devices 
then  known  were  merely  semaphores,  that  spoke  to  the  eye  for  the 
moment,  —  bearing  about  the  same  relation  to  the  great  discovery 
now  before  us  as  the  Abbe  Sicard's  invention  of  a  visual .  alphabet 
for  the  purposes  of  conversation  bore  to  the  art  of  printing  with 
movable  types.  Mr.  Dyar's  had  no  recording  apparatus,  as  he 
expressly  tells  us ;  and  Professor  Henry  had  contented  himself 
with  the  abundant  honors  of  his  laboratory  and  lecture-rooms. 

When,  therefore,  Mr.  Morse  claimed,  in  his  first  specification, 
"  the  application  of  the  electro-magnet,"  "  for  transmitting  by  signs 
and  sounds,  intelligence  between  distant  points,"  and  "  the  mode 
and  process  of  recording  or  making  permanently  signs.of  intelligence 
transmitted  between  distant  points ; "  and  when  in  his  second 
specification  he  claimed  "  the  making  use  of  the  motive  power  of 
magnetism,  when  developed  by  the  action  of  currents  of  electricity, 
as  a  means  of  operating  and  giving  motion  to  machinery,  which 
may  be  used  to  imprint  signals  upon  paper  or  other  suitable  ma- 
terial," "  for  the  purpose  of  telegraphic  communication  ;  "  charac- 
terizing his  "  invention  as  the  first  recording  or  printing  telegraph 
by  means  of  electro-magnetism  ;  "  and  when  in  his  third,  after 
again  describing  his  machinery  and  process,  he  once  more  charac- 
terized it  in  the  same  terms,  and  claimed  "  as  the  essence  of  his 
invention  the  use  of  the  motive  power  of  the  electric  or  galvanic 
current  (electro-magnetism  as  he  now  terms  it),  however  developed, 
for  marking  or  printing  intelligible  characters,  signs  of  letters  at 
any  distance  ;  "  through  these  several  forms  of  specification,  claim- 
ing and  renewing  his  claim  of  property  in  the  same  invention,  as 
it  seems  to  us,  —  and  claiming  in  each  and  in  all  of  them  no  more, 
as  it  also  seems  to  us,  than  he  was  justly  entitled  to  claim,  —  he 
declared  the  existence  of  a  new  art,  asserted  his  right  in  it  as  its 
inventor  and  owner,  and  announcing  fully  its  nature  and  elements, 
invoked  in  return  the  protection  of  the  laws. 

From  this  time  his  title  was  vested  as  patentee  of  the  art,  and 
other  men  became  competitors  with  him  only  in  the  work  of  diver- 
sifying and  perfecting  its  details.  He  himself  used  the  stylus  to 
impress  paper  or  parchment,  or  wax-coated  tablets,  it  may  be  ; 
though  he  sometimes  made  a  colored  record  by  the  friction  of  a 
pencil ;  another  substitutes  a  liquid  pigment,  or  stains  his  paper 


92 


with  a  chemical  ink  ;  the  next  perhaps  stains  his  paper  beforehand, 
and  writes  on  it  by  decomposing  the  coloring  matter  ;  and  another, 
yet  more  studious  of  originality  than  the  rest,  writes  in  a  cyclo- 
volute,  instead  of  a  straight  line,  and  manufactures  his  ink  as  he 
goes  along,  by  decomposing  the  tip  of  his  stylus  on  a  chemically 
moistened  paper.  They  are,  no  doubt,  all  of  them  inventors  ;  as 
was  the  man  who  first  cast  types  in  a  mould,  or  first  bent  metal 
into  the  practical  semblance  of  the  gray  goose-quill,  or  first  devised 
sympathetic  ink,  that  the  curious  in  letter-writing  might  veil  their 
secrets  from  the  profane.  All  these  toiled  ingeniously  and  well  to 
advance  and  embellish  a  pre-existing  art.  But  they  had  no  share 
in  the  discovery  of  the  art  itself,  and  can  no  more  claim  to  share 
the  property  which  its  discovery  may  have  conferred  on  another, 
than  he  who  has  devised  some  appropriate  setting  for  a  gem  can 
assert  an  interest  in  the  gem  itself. 

Yet  admitting,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  Mr.  Morse's  leading 
invention  is  correctly  designated  as  a  new  art ;  and  that  he  has 
sought  to  patent  it  accordingly,  by  a  compliance  with  all  the  requisi- 
tions of  the  statute,  —  it  is  still  contended,  and  with  much  of  ele- 
gant research  into  the  radical  meaning  of  the  term,  that  an  art,  as 
such,  cannot  be  made  the  subject  of  a  patent.  But  interpreting  lan- 
guage as  men  use  it  around  us  and  as  it  reflects  ideas,  the  question 
can  hardly  be  regarded  as  doubtful.  The  constitutional  provision 
under  which  our  patent  laws  are  framed,  looks  to  the  promotion  of 
"  useful  arts."  The  act  of  Congress  places  "  a  new  and  useful  art  " 
among  the  discoveries  it  professes  to  protect,  and  assigns  it  to  the 
first  place  on  the  list.  The  statute  of  21  James  I.,  c.  s.,  from  which 
the  patent  system  of  England  has  grown  up,  speaks  only  of  "  new 
manufactures."  Yet  the  judges  in  that  kingdom  find  a  warrant  in 
this  limited  expression  for  sustaining  patents  for  an  art,  and  even 
for  the  renewed  discovery  of  an  art  that  had  been  lost.  (See  the 
Hot  Blast  case,  Webster,  P.  C,  683,  717,  and  Mr. Webster's  note  at 
p.  718,  and  the  case  of  Wright's  patent,  ibid.,  736,  and  the  cases 
grouped  in  Hindmarch,  pp.  77-102.) 

Indeed,  the  author  whose  treatise  we  have  cited  last,  asserts 
with  much  emphasis,  that  it  is  the  art,  and  nothing  else,  which  is 
the  characteristic  subject  of  every  privilege  granted  by  a  patent 
under  the  statute.  —  p.  92.     And  it  may  be  noted  as  not  without 


93 

interest,  that  in  just  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  English  law 
cases,  the  English  patents  of  Cooke  and  Wheatstone,  Davy  and 
Bain,  claim  property  in  the  arts  for  which  their  mechanical  devices 
are  respectively  adapted  ;  not,  indeed,  in  so  many  words,  but  in 
language  as  unequivocal  as  that  employed  by  Mr.  Morse,  nor  can 
we  see  that  there  is  any  reason  of  policy  which  should  deny 
protection  to  an  art,  while  extending  it  to  the  machinery  or  pro- 
cesses which  the  art  teaches,  employs,  and  makes  useful.  Why 
should  the  type,  or  the  ink-ball,  or  the  press  itself  be  dignified 
beyond  the  art  to  which  they  minister  in  such  humble  subordination, 
and  without  which  they  are  rubbish?  Will  you  patent  the  new 
product,  and  the  new  elemental  means,  and  the  new  process  by 
which  they  act,  and  then  debate  whether  you  may  patent  the  art? 
You  have  patented  it  already. 

We  are  aware,  of  course,  that  it  has  been  held  in  some  cases, 
under  the  English  patent  law,  that  the  art  to  be  patented  must 
have  some  reference  to  a  manufacture.  (See  Hindmarch  ut  supra.) 
But  while  such  a  deduction  might  be  legitimate  from  the  words  of 
the  statute  of  James,  it  would  be  obviously  otherwise  under  the 
more  liberal  phraseology  of  an  act  of  Congress.  And  even  in 
England,  it  must  be  apparent  to  every  one  who  has  watched  the 
progress  of  this  patent  system,  that  this  limitation  is  practically 
disregarded  already,  and  that  it  is  to  be  repudiated  as  soon  as  it 
shall  interfere  with  the  protection  of  an  important  invention. 

Yet  in  truth  there  are  few  discoveries  of  practical  moment  to 
the  daily  concerns  of  men,  even  in  the  lapse  of  many  years.,  that 
are  not  more  or  less  directly  connected  with  some  department  of 
manufacturing  industry  or  skill.  The  convex  lens,  the  steamboat, 
the  iron  road  on  which  cars  are-  propelled  by  the  friction  of 
driving-wheels, —  some  of  these  may  be  so  indirectly  connected 
with  manufactures,  or  rather  they  are  associated  so  intimately  with 
the  leading  pursuits  and  interests  and  enjoyments  of  all  of  us,  as 
to  make  it  difficult  to  refer  them  to  the  category  of  a  particular 
manufacture.  Would  it  not  be  strange  if,  on  this  account,  they 
were  excluded  from  the  benefits  of  the  patent  system  ?  If  we  go 
back  to  the  early  story  of  our  race,  and  mark  the  stages  of  its  long 
and  difficult  advance,  —  from  language,  the  first  exponent  of 
thought,  to  letters,  its  first  record,  —  and  from  letters  to  printing, 


94 

which  first  diffused  letters  widely  though  slowly  among  men,  —  and 
from  printing  to  the  telegraph,  the  electric  register  of  thought, 
spreading  its  fibres  of  sympathy  over  the  intelligent  world,  and 
making  it  throb  simultaneously  everywhere,  as  with  the  pulsations 
of  one  heart ;  who  will  say  that  each  transition  between  these 
great  epochs,  that  signalize  the  moral  and  intellectual  progress  of 
mankind,  should  not  be  marked  by  a  memorial  as  stately  as  the 
first  clipping  of  a  cut  nail,  or  the  compounding  of  a  new  variety  of 
liquid  blacking?  or  that  the  men  to  whom  we  owe  them  should  not 
be  dealt  with  as  liberally,  or  at  least  as  justly,  by  the  State? 

2.  The  second  general  subject  of  Mr.  Morse's  patent  of  1840 
includes  many  particulars,  all  of  them  interesting  and  valuable  in 
their  connection  with  the  claim  we  have  just  been  considering. 
Taken  together,  they  give  a  practical  form  to  his  leading  inven- 
tion, and  guard  it  from  the  imputation  of  being  a  mere  abstract 
notion,  a  principle  resting  in  idea.  Taken  singly,  some  of  them 
appear  to  us  to  be  new,  as  his  alphabet  (claim  5),  his  combined 
series  (claim  4),  by  which  the  electric  current  from  one  battery, 
before  entirely  expending  itself  in  its  lengthened  circuit,  is  made 
to  set  another  battery  in  action,  from  which  another  circuit  trav- 
erses to  a  battery  still  beyond,  and  so  onwards  ;  his  adaptation  of 
clock-work  to  the  recording  cylinders  (claim  2)  ;  others,  again,  are 
only  new  as  they  are  elements  of  a  novel  combination.  There  is 
no  proof  before  us  that  any  of  the  devices  which  Mr.  Morse  has 
claimed  in  his  patent,  whether  as  independent  inventions  or  part 
of  a  combination,  are  not  really  his  so  far  as  he  has  claimed  them. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  claim  them  in  detail,  for  they  are  all  substan- 
tially protected  as  appliances  of  the  art,  which  is  the  great  subject 
of  his  patent. 

II.  The  second  patent  of  Mr.  Morse  is  for  what  has  been 
termed  his  Local  Circuit.  To  understand  the  questions  which 
arise  upon  this,  it  is  necessary  to  refer  back  to  the  apparatus  which 
he  had  patented  before,  and  to  explain  in  general  terms  its  princi- 
ple and  modes  of  operation.  I  shall  attempt  to  do  this  in  popular 
language,  and  without  stopping  to  consider  very  carefully  the  va- 
rying niceties  of  scientific  nomenclature. 

It  is  well  known  that  a  current  of  galvanic  electricity,  while  pass- 
ing along  a  wire  that  has  been  wound  spirally  round  a  bar  of  soft 


95 

iron,  communicates  to  the  iron  a  certain  degree  of  magnetic  virtue, 
and  that  the  iron  loses  this  magnetic  character  again  as  soon  as 
the  electricity  ceases  to  pass  along  the  wire  that  surrounds  it.  It 
is  also  well  known  that  the  electric  fluid  may  be  passed  along  a 
wire  of  great  length,  and  yet  retain,  even  at  the  farthest  extremity 
of  the  wire,  a  sufficient  degree  of  energy  to  impart  this  occasional 
magnetism  to  the  iron,  and  to  make  it  capable  for  the  time  of 
attracting  any  small  body  of  iron  that  may  be  near  it.  If  such  a 
small  body  of  iron  be  made  to  form  the  extremity  of  a  nicely-bal- 
anced lever,  it  is  plain  that  while  the  one  extremity  of  the  lever  is 
attracted  towards  the  temporary  magnet,  the  other  extremity  will 
be  moved  in  the  opposite  direction  ;  and  if  to  this  other  extremity 
we  affix  a  pencil  or  stylus,  this  will  press  upon  whatever  surface 
may  be  interposed  in  the  way  of  its  motion,  and  may  either  mark 
the  surface,  or,  if  it  be  of  a  yielding  nature,  indent  it.  It  is  plain, 
also,  that  when  the  bar  of  soft  iron  ceases  to  be  magnetic,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  electric  fluid  ceasing  to  pass  round  it,  the  lever 
will  take  its  original  position,  and  the  stylus  ceases  to  press  upon 
the  resisting  surface. 

If,  now,  we  suppose  that  surface  to  be  moved  uniformly  below 
the  stylus,  it  is  obvious  that  the  surface  will  be  marked  with  a 
straight  line,  and  that  this  marked  line  will  be  intercepted  during 
any  intermission  of  the  electric  current,  so  as  to  form  a  broken  se- 
ries of  straight  lines  ;  or,  if  the  electric  current  passes  and  inter- 
mits, in  rapid  alternation,  a  series  of  dots  or  points.  These  broken 
traces  of  the  stylus,  the  lines  and  dots,  constitute  the  alphabet  of 
Mr.  Morse  ;  a  certain  succession  of  either,  or  a  certain  combina- 
tion of  the  two,  being  arbitrarily  chosen  to  indicate  a  particular 
letter. 

The  galvanic  battery  generates  the  electric  fluid  continuously, 
whenever  the  two  extremes,  or  poles  of  the  battery  are  connected 
by  a  suitable  conducting  medium,  —  such  as  a  metallic  wire,  water, 
or  the  earth  itself, — along  which  conductor,  as  it  is  called,  the 
electric  fluid  may  pass  between  one  pole  of  the  batteiy  and  the 
other,  thus  performing  what  is  termed  an  electric  circuit. 

Let  us  now  extend  a  continuous  wire  from  one  of  the  poles  of 
the  galvanic  battery  to  a  distant  point,  taking  care,  that  it  shall 
not  be  intermediately  hi  contact  with  the  earth  or  with  any  other 
good  conductor  of  electricity,  and  let  us  at  the  distant  point  pass 


96 

the  wire  in  a  spiral  coil  round  a  bar  of  soft  iron,  and  thence  lead 
it  back  again  to  the  other  pole  of  the  battery,  or  avail  ourselves  of 
the  earth  itself  as  a  part  of  the  circuit.  It  is  obvious,  from  what 
we  have  said  before,  that  the  electric  fluid,  passing  from  the  bat- 
tery along  the  wire,  around  tbe  occasional  magnet,  and  back  to  the 
batter}r,  and  then,  at  appropriate  intervals  of  time,  interrupted  at 
its  circuit,  will  cause  the  stylus  to  make  its  trace  of  lines  or  dots, 
or,  in  other  words,  its  alphabetical  record,  at  the  distant  station. 

It  only  remains,  then,  to  devise  a  mode  of  interrupting  and  re- 
newing, at  pleasure,  the  flow  of  electricity,  —  breaking  and  closing 
the  circuit,  in  the  language  of  the  experts.  This  is  done  by  divid- 
ing the  wire,  near  the  battery,  and  then  arranging  a  simple  finger- 
key,  which,  when  struck  or  pressed  upon  by  the  finger,  brings  a 
short  metallic  conductor  into  intimate  contact  with  the  two  ends 
of  the  divided  wire,  and  thus  restores  the  continuity  of  the  circuit, 
while  the  pressure  continues  on  the  key.  This  may  serve  as  a 
rude  explanation  of  Mr.  Morse's  Electro-Magnetic  Telegraph,  in 
its  simplest  form. 

It  was  found,  however,  at  an  early  period,  that  though  the  elec- 
tric current  was  still  appreciable  after  it  had  passed  over  a  great 
length  of  wire,  yet  in  traversing  the  very  long  circuits  that  were 
required  to  include  distant  telegraph  stations,  it  ceased  to  impart 
a  sufficient  degree  of  energy  to  the  temporary  magnet  to  work  the 
stylus  effectively.  To  meet  this  difficulty  Mr.  Morse  resorted  to 
the  simple  device  of  employing  a  series  of  batteries,  distributed 
over  his  line  of  telegraphic  communication,  with  as  many  shorter 
circuits,  each  operating  by  means  of  a  magnet  at  its  extremity,  to 
control  the  movements  of  a  small  lever,  that  opened  or  closed  the 
circuit  of  the  battery  beyond.  The  last  battery  gave  efficiency  to 
the  recording  apparatus  at  the  distant  station.  This  formed  the 
combined  series  of  Mr.  Morse's  first  patent. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  that  the  intermediate  magnets  of  the  combined 
series,  besides  opening  and  closing  the  circuits,  might  be  also  made 
to  act  as  recording  magnets,  by  merely  adapting  to  them  the  stylus, 
with  its  appendages  ;  and  there  would  thus  be  as  many  stations  of 
telegraphic  communication  as  there  were  batteries  and  minor  cir- 
cuits. But  there  still  remained  this  objection  to  the  combined 
series,  that  it  could  only  be  worked  in  one  direction,  and  it  was 


97 


necessary,  therefore,  to  have  two  complete  lines  of  wires,  with  their 
batteries  and  magnets,  in  order  to  establish  a  reciprocal  commu- 
nication. 

To  dispense  with  this  duplication  of  machinery  and  expense  was 
the  object  of  Mr.  Morse,  in  the  invention  which  is  the  subject  of 
his  second  patent.  It  had  been  found  that  the  magnetism,  excited 
by  the  electric  coil,  was  capable,  at  the  end  of  an  almost  indefi- 
nitely extended  circuit,  of  giving  motion  to  a  delicately  adjusted 
lever,  but  that  this  was  the  apparent  limit  of  its  dynamic  power. 
A  single  wire  might  be  employed,  then,  without  intervening  mag- 
nets, by  connecting  it  at  the  extremities  with  electro-magnets  of 
great  sensibility  of  mechanism,  and  employing  the  force  of  those 
magnets  merely  to  open  short  local  circuits,  from  which  local  cir- 
cuits' the  degree  of  magnetic  energy,  adequate  to  the  purpose  of 
the  recording  apparatus,  could  be  derived. 

It  is  found,  however,  that  the  magnetism  induced  in  soft  iron  by 
the  electric  current,  though  truly  occasional,  does  not  absolutely 
cease  at  the  instant  of  breaking  the  circuit,  but  seems  to  linger  in 
the  iron  for  an  appreciable  interval  of  time  afterwards,  with  an 
intensity  which,  though  slight,  bears  an  apparent  relation  to  the 
intensity  of  the  current  that  induced  it.  This  would  interfere 
greatly  with  the  veiy  rapid  operation  of  the  telegraph,  if  the  lever 
were  left  to  withdraw  itself  from  the  magnet,  to  which  it  serves  as 
armature,  by  the  force  of  gravity  alone.  A  small  compensation 
spring  is  therefore  connected  with  the  machine,  of  sufficient 
strength  to  overcome  the  attraction  of  this  lingering  or  continuous 
magnetic  force,  but  not  sufficient  to  resist  the  attraction  of  the 
magnet,  when  the  circuit  is  closed. 

But  the  electric  current,  after  passing  over  a  long  wire,  does  not 
exert  a  uniform  dynamic  energy.  However  carefully  insulated  at 
first,  the  wire  becomes,  after  a  time,  more  or  less  exposed  to 
atmospheric  action,  and  the  fluid  is  more  or  less  dissipated  in  con- 
sequence. The  posts  on  which  it  is  supported  become  conductors 
during  storms  of  rain,  and  carry  off  the  fluid  to  the  earth.  Under 
other  circumstances,  the  electro-magnetic  phenomena  are  exagger- 
ated at  the  receiving  station,  by  atmospheric  electricity  from  the 
regions  through  which  the  conducting  wire  has  passed.  The  bat- 
teries, too,  do  not  always  generate  the  fluid  with  the  same  rapidity. 
In  a  word  the  current  at  the  extremity  of  the  circuit  is  irregular. 
13 


98 

Then,  it  is  apparent,  that  under  these  varying  states  of  the  mag- 
netic energy  the  adjustment  of  the  compensating  spring  at  the  re- 
ceiving station  must  not  be  uniform.  If  its  tension  were  just  that 
which  would  neutralize  or  barely  overcome  the  continuous  magneto 
ism  induced  by  an  electric  current  of  small  intensity,  it  would  not. 
draw  back  the  armature  when  the  inducing  current  had  been  in 
greater  force  ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  a  stronger  spring  adapted  to 
the  case  of  a  powerful  current,  would  oppose  controlling  resistance 
to  the  magnetism  induced  by  a  feeble  one.  The  Adjustable  Re- 
ceiving Magnet,  described  in  Mr.  Morse's  second  patent,  meets 
perfectly  the  conditions  of  this  difficulty,  and  enables  the  operator, 
by  the  mere  touch  of  a  finger  on  an  adjusting  screw,  to  regulate 
the  tension  of  the  spring,  and  adapt  his  apparatus  to  the  circum- 
stances of  the  moment. 

The  main  line  thus  arranged,  with  its  delicate  receiving  magnet 
and  its  short  recording  circuit  at  each  extremity,  made  no  pro 
vision  for  intermediate  or  collateral  stations.  But,  as  it  had  been 
found  desirable  in  practice  to  distribute  the  batteries,  in  which  the 
electric  fluid  was  generated,  over  different  parts  of  the  line,  so  as 
to  reinforce  the  energies  of  the  current  in  its  progress,  it  was 
almost  an  obvious  suggestion  to  connect  at  these  several  points  a 
receiving  magnet  of  adjustable  character,  either  with  the  main 
line  or  with  the  battery  forming  part  of  it,  and  to  attach  to  this 
receiving  magnet  a  local  registering  circuit,  or  a  branch  circuit 
leading  to  one  or  more  collateral  stations. 

Such  I  understand  to  be  Mr.  Morse's  Local  or  Independent  Cir- 
cuit. His  patent  of  1856,  as  reissued  in  1848,  claims  it  in  these 
words  :  "  The  employment  in  a  certain  telegraphic  circuit  of  a 
device,  or  contrivance,  called  the  receiving  magnet,  in  combination 
with  a  short  local  independent  circuit  or  circuits,  each  having  a 
register  and  i*egistering  magnet,  or  other  magnetic  contrivances  for 
registering,  and  sustaining  such  a  relation  to  the  registering  mag- 
net or  other  magnetic  contrivances  for  registering,  and  to  the 
length  of  circuit  of  telegraphic  line,  as  will  enable  me  to  obtain, 
with  the  aid  of  a  main  galvanic  battery  and  circuit,  and  the  inter- 
vention of  a  local  battery  and  circuit,  such  motion  or  power  for 
registering  as  could  not  be  obtained  otherwise  without  the  use 
of  a  much  larger  galvanic  battery,  if  at  all. 


99 

That  the  local  or  independent  circuit,  as  we  have  described  it, 
and  as  it  is  more  accurately  and  perhaps  more  intelligibly  set  out 
by  Mr.  Morse  in  his  specification,  was  original  with  him,  cannot  be 
seriously  questioned.  The  devices  referred  to  in  the  patents  of 
Cooke  and  Wheatstone,  and  Davy,  are  at  least  imperfect  modifica- 
cations  of  the  combined  series  of  Morse's  first  patent ;  one  of  them 
not  improbably  borrowed  from  it.  The  adjustable  receiving  mag- 
net, the  indispensable  and  characteristic  element  of  the  local  cir- 
cuit patent,  no  one  has  claimed  but  himself. 

It  is  only  to  make  the  first  approach  to  a  controversy  on  this 
point,  to  prove  to  us  that  Professor  Henry  had  as  early  as  1828 
made  the  intensity  magnet,  with  which  the  scientific  world  is  now 
familiar,  —  or  that  he  afterwards,  and  before  Mr.  Morse's  first 
application  for  a  patent,  had  illustrated  before  his  classes,  at 
Princeton,  the  manner  in  Which  one  circuit  could  operate  to  hold 
another  closed,  or  to  break  it  at  pleasure,  —  or  that  he  had  foreseen 
the  applicability  of  his  discoveries  for  the  purposes  of  a  telegraph. 

The  question  is  not  one  of  scientific  precedence  ;  and  if  it  were, 
this  is  not  the  forum  that  could  add  to  or  detract  from  the 
eminent  fame  of  Mr.  Henry.  It  is  purely  a  question  of  invention, 
applied  in  a  practical  form  to  a  specific  use,  and  so  regarded,  it 
admits  of  but  a  single  answer. 

In  passing  from  the  questions  of  originality  and  identity  of 
invention  that  have  been  raised  in  the  land,  without  a  more  detailed 
review  of  all  the  testimony,  there  is  reason  perhaps  for  an  explan- 
atory remark.  It  is  this  ;  the  decree  of  a  judge  finds  its  appropri- 
ate and  only  justification  in  the  facts  proved  before  him,  not  in 
theories,  however  ingenious,  nor  the  less  speculative  influences  of 
other  minds  ;  and  where  the  essential  facts  of  a  case  are  as  clearly 
established  as  they  are  here,  it  would  be  unprofitable  as  well  as 
painful,  perhaps,  to  discuss  the  particulars  of  variance  between  the 
witnesses. 

There  is  no  place  in  which  the  evidence  of  scientific  men,  upon 
topics  within  their  own  departments  of  knowledge,  is  more  to  be 
desired  than  in  this  court,  when  sitting  for  the  trial  of  patent 
causes ;  and  the  opinions,  also  of  such  men,  when  duly  supported 
by  reasonings  founded  on  ascertained  fact,  must  of  course  be 
valued  highly.     But  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that,  even  on  a 


100 

question  of  science,  opinion  can  be  dignified  here  or  elsewher1 
with  the  mantle  of  authority.  Still  less  can  we  allow  it  to  avail  us 
here,  when  it  assumes  contested  fact's,  or  volunteers  to  aid  us  in 
determining  the  import  of  written  instruments. 

These  remarks  are  not  dictated  by  a  spirit  of  unkind  or  uncour- 
teous  commentary  on  the  depositions  before  us.  We  know  that 
when  opinion  is  active,  it  is  not  always  easy  to  limit  its  range. 
There  is  besides  very  much  of  accurate  scientific  history,  and  of 
just  and  well  guarded  deduction  from  it  in  these  volumes  of  ex- 
hibits. But  it  must  be  confessed  also,that  there  is  to  be  found  here 
and  there  not  a  little  of  imperfectly  considered  dogma,  as  well  as 
something  of  doubtfully  regulated  memory — and  it  has  seemed  to  us, 
in  this  case  as  well  as  in  others,  that  the  toil  and  expense  and  excite- 
ment of  litigation  might  have  been  moderated,  perhaps,  if  the  appro_ 
priate  tone  and  province  of  testimony  had  been  more  exactly  under, 
stood  by  some  of  the  witnesses. 

The  objections  which  have  been  taken  to  the  terms  of  the  reissue 
of  Mr.  Morse's  patent  in  1846,  may  be  answered  by  a  simple  ref- 
erence to  that  part  of  our  opinion  in  which  we  have  considered  the 
arguments  of  the  same  character  that  were  urged  against  the 
patent  of  1840. 

It  is  beyond  controversy  that  the  local  circuit  patent  has  been 
infringed  upon  at  some  of  the  stations  of  the  respondent's  line,  and 
it  is  the  opinion  of  the  court  that  it  is  also  violated  whenever  the 
branch  circuit  of  Mr,  Rogers  is  employed.  We  have  not  been  able 
to  see  the  asserted  difference  in  principle  bet  ween  the  two  devices 
Both  are  equally  well  described  as  branch  or  as  local  circuits 
They  have  the  same  purpose  ;  they  effect  it  by  the  same  instrumen- 
tality, even  in  appearance,  to  a  great  degree,  and  they  seem  to 
vary  only,  in  this,  that  the  one  derives  its  electric  flnid  from  a  bat- 
tery placed  within  the  line  of  the  main  circuit,  and  the  other  from 
a  battery  placed  without  it.  The  change  may  be  for  the  better,  or  it 
may  not ;  if  it  be,  it  is  patentable  as  an  improvement,  but  it  cannot 
be  used  without  Mr.  Morse's  license,  until  after  his  patent  has  ex- 
pired. 

III.  The  third  patent  is  for  the  chemical  telegraph.  We  do  not 
propose  to  enter  on  the  discussion  of  this.  The  subject  of  it  is 
clearly  within  the  original  patent  of  Mr.  Morse,  if  we  have  cor- 


101 


rectly  apprehended  the  legal  interpretation  and  effect  of  that 
instrument.  We  will  only  say,  that  we  do  not  hold  it  to  have  been 
invalidated  by  the  decision  of  the  learned  chief  justice  of  the  dis- 
trict of  Columbia,  on  the  question  of  interference.  The  forms  of 
the  two  machines  before  him  were  not  the  same  ;  and  the  leading 
principle  of  both  having  been  already  appropriated  and  secured  by 
the  magnetic  telegraph  patent  of  1840,  nothing  remained  but  form 
to  be  the  subject  of  interference. 

The  counsel  for  the  complainants  will  be  pleased  to  prepare,  for 
the  consideration  of  the  court,  the  draft  of  a  decree  in  accordance 
with  the  prayer  of  their  bill. 

Extract  from  the  decision  of  Justice  Woodbury,  United  States  Circuit 
Court,  District  of  Massachusetts,  1850. 

Among  the  sixty-two  competitors  for  the  discovery  of  the  electric 
telegraph  by  1838  (as  computed  in  Channing's  Ev.,  41,  a),  Morse 
alone,  in  1837,  seems  to  have  reached  the  most  perfect  result 
desirable  for  public  and  practical  use.  (R.  6,  Morse  Ev.,  128-9,  r.) 
This  may  not  have  been  ccomplished  so  wholly  by  the  invention  of 
much  that  was  entirely  new  as  by  "  improvements,"  to  use  the 
language  of  his  patent,  on  what  had  already  been,  done  on 
the  same  subject,  improvements,  ingenious,  useful  and  valua- 
ble. By  the  needle,  or  lever  instead,  not  only  deflected  by 
the  magnet,  but  provided  with  a  pen  to  write,  or  in  other 
words,  a  pin  at  the  end  to  make  a  dot  or  stroke; — when 
thus  deflected,  as  the  circuit  was  held  longer  closed  or  broken,  with 
machinery  to  keep  the  paper  moving  in  the  mean  time,  and  so  as  to 
inscribe  the  dots  and  lines  separately,  and  more  especially  with  an 
alphabet,  invented  and  matured,  assigning  letters  and  figures  to 
these  dots  and  lines  according  to  their  number  and  combination, 
he  accomplished  the  last  desideratum.  (1  Renwick's  Ev.,  235.)  Thus 
the  fortunate  idea  was  at  last  formed  and  announced  which 
enabled  the  dead  machine  to  move  and  speak  intelligibly  at  any 
distance,  with  lightning  speed. 

It  will  be  seen,  that  amidst  all  these  efforts  at  telegraphic  com- 
munication by  electricity  and  electro-maguetism,  more  or  less  suc- 
cessful from  1745  to  1838,  none  had  fully  attained  to  what  Morse 
accomplished. 


102 


Some  had  succeeded  in  sending  information  by  signals,  even 
beyond  the  decomposition  of  water  and  the  deflection  of  the  needle. 
They  had  made  persons  at  a  distance  recognize  the  sign  used,  and 
thus  obtain  intelligence.  They  had  also  made  marks  at  a  distance. 
But  in  no  way  does  it  appear  that  they  had  sent  information  at  a 
distance,  and  at  the  same  moment,  by  the  same  machine,  traced 
down  and  recorded  it  permanently  and  intelligibly  and  quickly. 
This  triumph  was  reserved  to  Morse's  inflexible  perseverance  in 
experiments  and  close  observation  ;  and  chiefly  after  arming  the 
end  of  the  needle  or  lever  with  a  pin,  by  use  of  a  roller  with  ap- 
propriate machinery  to  move  his  paper,  so  as  to  trace  successive 
dots  and  marks,  and  by  a  stenographic  alphabet  to  explain  the 
marks  made  on  the  paper,  and  by  more  power  through  his  com- 
bined circuits,  to  effect  all  at  a  greater  distance,  and  with  greater 
despatch.     (Gale's  Ev.,  128,  r.) 

Afterwards,  by  the  improvements  in  batteries  by  Daniell  and 
Grove  in  1843,  he  was  enabled,  with  these  local  circuits,  to  increase 
the  power  of  the  electro-magnet  so  as  to  accomplish  this  at  a  dis- 
tance, and  with  a  speed  and  economy  which  rendered  the  inven- 
tion applicable  to  general  use.  (Jackson's  Ev.,  166.) 

Before  1843,  Hare's  battery  was  used,  and  was  too  feeble 
(Jackson's  Ev.,  164,  v. ;  Channing's  Ev.,  45,  v),  and  before  that, 
Cruikshank's.  The  want  of  this  increased  power  had  rendered 
former  attempts  at  times  abortive  for  practical  purposes,  and  its 
being  recently  supplied  by  the  science  of  Faraday  and  Henry, 
tended  more  speedily,  by  Daniell  and  Grove's  battery,  founded  on 
them,  to  remove  the  greatest  obstacle  to  success.  (Davis'  Manual, 
p.  125  ;  Silliman's  Ev.,  95,  v ;  Jackson,  166.) 

Others  had  before,  and  about  the  same  time,  as  has  been 
noticed  already,  made  marks  on  paper  at  a  distance  by  the  de- 
flection of  the  needle  and  by  sparks,  and  attached  special  mean- 
ings to  them,  and  the  spaces  between  them. 

But  the  evidence  is  strong  that  Morse's,  if  not  the  very  first  in 
these  respects,  was  the  most  perfect  and  available  for  practical  use, 
and  the  improvements  by  others  in  batteries  came  very  oppor- 
tunely to  aid  in  its  power  for  distant  operations,  beyond  what  even 
the  local  circuits  had  done.  (Prof.  Silliman's  Ev.,  96,  a.)  This 
special  advance  beyond  all  others,  except  some  new  combination, 


103 

looks  as  if  chiefly  mechani  cal,  but  still  it  sufficed  to  promote  the 
desired  object. 

By  them  and  his  new  combinations,  he  was  going  a  step  farther 
than  any  of  his  predecessors,  for  practical  use,  had  accomplished; 
and  this  entitles  him  to  protection  and  the  fame  he  has  achieved. 

This  he  and  his  assignees  can  therefore  protect,  but  not  particu- 
lars known  long  before  him,  or  which  he  neither  claimed  nor  de- 
scribed, nor  invented.  As  before  explained,  he  must  not  be  con- 
sidered to  have  claimed  the  invention  of  the  general  principle  or 
jirt  of  telegraphing  by  electro-magnetism,  nor  could  he,  as  already 
shown,  have  protected  it  if  he  had.  But  all  he  clearly  claimed 
was  a  "  method  "  of  doing  it,  "  an  improvement"  in  doing  it,  and 
these  he  has  a  right  to  protect,  and  these  only.  They  were  the 
pen  to  mark  or  trace  in  the  end  of  his  lever  or  needle  a  happy 
thought,  but  the  movement  of  the  paper  on  the  roller  was  almost 
as  necessary  to  receive  marks  in  succession,  and  his  alphabet  to  be 
thus  applied  and  used  was  the  crowning  act  of  his  invention. 
(Renwick  Ev.,  244,  p.) 


Date  Due 


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